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THE 
YOUNG BACHELOR 



WITH AN APPENDIX 



CONTAINING AN ESSAY ON 



The Destiny of the Negro in America" 



BY 



CAMM PATTESON. 





PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY 

J. P. BELL COMPANY 

LYNCHBURG, VA. 
1900 



67212 



'i_itopwucy of Concices* 

'vi Copies Receweo 
GCTk? 1900 

Copyright wiry 




SECOND COPY. 

delivered to 

OfiOER DIVISION. 

_JIQLafl 19(10. 


. 



Copyright 1900, 

By CAMM PATTESON. 

All rights reserved. 



DEDICATION. 



TO 

THE FRIEND OF MY BOYHOOD DAYS AT LYNCHBURG COLLEGE, 

WHO HAS WON SUCH HIGH DISTINCTION IN 

WAR, AND IN PEACE ; 

WHOSE STATESMANSHIP HAS LEFT A LASTING IMPRESSION 

UPON THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY ; 

WHOSE KIND AND GENEROUS QUALITIES HAVE ENDEARED 

HIM TO THE PEOPLE OF VIRGINIA; 

OF WHOM IT MAY WELL BE SAID, AS THE EDINBURGH REVIEW 

ONCE WROTE OF CHARLES DICKENS, 

"VAIN, VAIN WILL BE THE EFFORT TO CLOSE AGAINST 

HIM THE DOOR OF THE TEMPLE OF FAME," 

IS 
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR 



INTRODUCTION. 

The war between the States of the Union was by 
far the greatest and most disastrous that has ever oc- 
curred on the American Continent. Its effects are as 
apparent in the year 1898, more than thirty-two years 
after its conclusion, as they were the year it ended. 
It broke up the ties of centuries, and swept away a 
civilization almost as completely as it could have been 
done by the traditional earthquake which, many thous- 
ands of years since, is said to have submerged the island 
of Atlantis. 

The object of The Young Bachelor is, incident- 
ally, to describe the condition of our Southern States 
prior to and during the war between the States of our 
Union, and particularly to describe the state of quasi 
war which existed for nearly ten years after its close, 
when millions of semi-barbarous negroes were turned 
loose, without a dollar or an acre of land, without edu- 
cation, and with their hearts inflamed against their 
former owners, when these owners were themselves 
absolutely impoverished by the war, and the ban of 
the civilized world was in part against them; when 



6 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

they had no government to which they could turn for 
relief; when without a currency, for all the money 
they had was destroyed by the fated field of Appomat- 
tox ; when an insolent Freedman's Bureau, in many 
instances, egged on the former slaves to acts of cruelty 
and insubordination ; it placed the Anglo-Saxon to a 
higher test to preserve his civilization than that race 
had ever before endured. 

Fortunately for the South, from the Potomac to the 
Rio Grande del Norte, it consisted of an homogeneous 
people. There had been but little foreign emigration 
among them. Virginia had been settled by the very 
pick and flower of the English people. The cavalier 
of England looked upon it as his home. He brought there 
the sterling integrity and the love of liberty which he 
had acquired in the greatest country on this earth. He 
brought his church, which he looked upon as an insti- 
tution which was the very basis and prop of society, 
and while in his actions he did not carry out its edicts, 
yet his legislation shows that its rights were always 
carefully guarded. His tithes were cheerfully paid to 
the Established Church, and all the rights of that great 
establishment were protected by the most stringent regu- 
lations. 

Opposed to the institution of African slavery, the 
Virginia cavalier protested in the most eloquent and 
fervid manner against the introduction of negroes in 
Virginia. That he made this magnificent protest is to 
his everlasting credit. But, alas ! the introduction of 
tobacco, a new-found weed of most singular and seduc- 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 7 

tive qualities, was an offering of the New World to the 
Old. Its cultivation was immensely profitable, and this 
profit was the true cause of the establishment of African 
slavery in the American colonies. Our ancestors were 
human ; having made the protest, they accepted what 
the mother country forced upon them. Almost for 
centuries money flowed into their coffers from the sale 
in London of this weed. And our Northern brethren 
waxed rich under the profiting influence of the African 
slave trade. The city of Boston became prosperous by 
engaging in the trade of importing negroes from Africa 
and selling them to their Southern brethren. Historic 
Plymouth Rock saw cargo after cargo of slaves carried 
to Massachusetts without a word of murmur from her 
citizens, nor did abolitionism make any great headway 
until our Northern brethren had sold, practically, all 
of their slaves and pocketed the money. Then it was 
that their philanthropy for the negro grew to unbounded 
dimensions. This is written in no unkind spirit ; it is 
the truth of history. 

The edict of Nantez and the persecution of the Hu- 
guenots had peopled our neighbor, South Carolina, with 
a noble and impulsive race. They, too, had found 
African slavery to be highly profitable, and it is true 
that the combination, in the great constitutional con- 
vention of 1787, of South Carolina and Massachusetts, 
the Puritan and the Huguenot, extended the African 
slave trade to 1808, that is, for twenty years after the 
formation of the Federal Constitution. 

Virginia, in 1676, raised the first bonfire of liberty 



8 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

upon the American continent when Nathaniel Bacon, 
her noble son, fought for that liberty which his people 
obtained more than a century afterwards. His name, 
with that of Hanson, the first American martyr, will live 
in the pantheon of history forever. 

Virginia, a century later, again, in the great revolu- 
tion of 1776, was the first to unfurl her banner in favor 
of human rights and human liberty. As the great his- 
torian, George Bancroft, has said with singular magna- 
nimity, in writing of that revolution : " Virginia rose 
with equal unanimity with Massachusetts, but with a 
more commanding resolution." And to show their 
opposition to African slavery as an institution, the Vir- 
ginia people, shortly after the formation of the Federal 
Constitution, committed what, in the light of subsequent 
events, has been shown to have been an act of egregious 
folly in giving all of her territory north and west of 
the Ohio river to the Federal Union, coupling it with 
the condition that slavery should never exist within the 
limits of that splendid donation. What Virginian is 
there who does not feel his heart bound with a feeling 
of noble pride and exultation when he reads the terms 
of that gift, which forbids slavery forever in what is 
now known as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and a part of 
Michigan ? Suppose that gift had not been made ; but 
for it Virginia would have been the commanding State 
of the Union, and perhaps the war between the States 
of this Union might have had a different result. For 
my own part, and on behalf of nine-tenths of the people 
of the South, I can say with truth I am glad it ended 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 9 

as it did — not that I am disloyal to my State and my 
people ; far from it. I will guard the memory of a loved 
and lost cause and the memory of the gallant heroes 
who fought for the Southern Cross with the same ferocity, 
if in my power, that a tigress is said to guard her young ; 
I love and revere their memory, because they thought 
they were right, and in fact they were right ; but, right 
or wrong, I stand by and uphold the history of the 
South. 

Long after the war was over it occurred to me, upon 
reflection, that with Abraham Lincoln, the President, 
stating in his inaugural address that he had neither the 
wish nor the purpose to interfere with slavery in the 
States in which it then existed, with a majority of both 
the lower and upper house of Congress, the war might, 
by prudent men, have been postponed for a time, at 
least ; still, it was as inevitable as fate, and it had to 
come. And, in this connection, I will pause long enough 
to pay a just and merited tribute to Abraham Lincoln, 
a great and good man, who, to a profound and far-seeing 
judgment, added the most lovable qualities of human 
nature. It is not known to many people, and yet it is 
true, that he believed in his heart that Southerners who 
were loyal to the Union during the war should be paid 
for their slaves. I cite in proof of this fact his mes- 
sage to Congress : 

"March 6, 1862. 

" I recommend the adoption of a joint resolution by your honora- 
ble houses which shall be substantially as follows : 

Ui Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate with any 
State which may adopt gradual abolition of slavery, giving to such 



10 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to 
compensate for the inconvenience, public and private, produced by 
such a change of system.' " 

He advocated this resolution by a strong message, 
stating, among other things, " In the mere financial or 
pecuniary view, any member of Congress, with the 
census and treasury reports before him, can readily see 
for himself how very soon the current expenditures of 
this war would purchase, at fair valuation, all the slaves 
in any named State." He closed this remarkable mes- 
sage with these solemn words : " In full view of my 
great responsibility to my God and my country I 
earnestly beg the attention of Congress and the people 
to the subject." 

This famous message shows an insight into the heart 
of this great and good man. He certainly believed 
that people loyal to the Union should be compensated 
for their slaves. That he was right no honest man can 
deny. It affords me pleasure to pay this just tribute 
to his memory. His horrid assassination was the most 
desperate blow ever received by the South. The harm 
done to the Southern people by that desperate deed can 
never be fully estimated. I do not say this to please 
any man of Northern birth ; I say it because it is true. 
I am unlike some Southern men, who have been success- 
ful authors, who have caught the ear of a large and 
wealthy Northern clientage by covert but unfounded 
slanders upon their own people — " who bend the preg- 
nant hinges of the knee, that thrift may follow fawn- 
ing." For all such writers, who are traitors to the 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 11 

land of their birth, I have but three words, " Odi et 
arceo " — " I hate them, and mean to keep them at a 
distance." They have BoswelPs flunkeyism without 
his talent, and will reap their reward, either in complete 
oblivion or in the gibes, the sneers and derision of 
mankind. 

The Young Bachelor is founded in great part on 
truth. The scenes that were enacted in Virginia for 
five years after the war are well worthy of being pre- 
served, and not the least deserving is the action of the 
Old Virginia country negro. In old Sterling and Tildy, 
his wife, I have attempted to show some of their noble 
traits. Negroes like these have formed a bond between 
the two races, and this bond is doing noble work in 
solving the great problem of the coexistence of two 
totally different races in the same country. 

The South has flung off the chains of slavery ; it is 
grappling with the greatest problems of life. It has 
before it a noble destiny — perhaps the history, though 
painted in fiction, of the travail and labor through which 
she has gone, may prove not unworthy of interest. 

II. 

For about a year after the surrender of the Confed- 
erate armies at Appomattox, and in North Carolina, 
the condition of the Southern States, while wretched 
in the extreme, was not so bad as it was from 1866 to 
1871, during what is properly known as the reconstruc- 
tion period. In 1865 and 1866 all the people of ou$ 



12 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

section were poor together ; the situation so well de- 
scribed as angusta res domi was felt in every household. 
Sacrifices were cheerfully borne, and a sincere desire to 
re-enter the Union upon honorable terms was the wish 
of a vast majority of the people. 

If the overtures of the South had been met by the 
people of the North in the same high and manly man- 
ner that they were made, many long years of poverty 
and suffering would have been saved. But unwise 
counsels prevailed with those who had maintained the 
banner of the Union. 

It is not meant to be stated here that the people of 
the South were without fault ; on the contrary, perhaps 
the most grievous blunder ever made in American his- 
tory was made by the Peace Commissioners who met 
the President, Abraham Lincoln, and the Secretary of 
State, William H. Seward, at Hampton Roads in Feb- 
ruary, 1865, of which conference, though no written 
memoranda was made at the time, by agreement, we 
have now an authentic account. Without meaning to 
go over the now well-known statements made at this 
historic interview, it is sufficient to state that Abraham 
Lincoln did write on a sheet of paper the word " Union/ ' 
and coupled it with the remark that he would agree to 
anything reasonable and proper, provided the Union 
was restored, stating that the freedom of the slaves 
must be recognized — though he believed that emanci- 
pation should be gradual, and named five years as the 
limit — and that the Confederate armies must at once 
lay down their arms, and pledging himself to get the 



THE YOUNG BACHELOE. 13 

very best possible terms for the South that he could.* 
That he had the power to obtain for us favorable terms, 
is now admitted by all reflecting men. This proposition 
ought to have been accepted. True statesmanship re- 
quired it ; if it had been accepted it would have altered, 
in great part, the history of North America. 

It is well known, as has been heretofore shown in 
the first part of this introduction, that Abraham Lincoln 
believed that the citizens of the South who had been 
loyal to the Union should be compensated for the loss 
of their slaves. If his proposition had been accepted 
at Fortress Monroe, it would probably have resulted, I 
think I am justified in stating, in the complete but 
gradual emancipation of the negro race, which would 
have been an inestimable blessing to both races ; certain 
it is, that unrestricted negro suffrage, for a long period 
of years, would practically have been an impossibility. 
At the date of that conference the resources of the Con- 
federacy were practically exhausted, and the success of 
our armies after that time would have been nothing 
short of a miracle. This fact was well known to the 
leading men of Virginia, and of the South. If peace 
had been made at Fortress Monroe on the terms which 
were proposed, no one would really ever have known 
which side had conquered. But, alas ! alas ! it is with 
a sigh that I recall the infatuation of folly which 
clouded the judgment of our leaders on that memorable 
occasion. 

The writer, who was an officer in the Confederate 

* I refer here to Nicholay and Hay's " Life of Abraham Lincoln." 



14 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

army, happened to be in Richmond on the day that the 
action of the Peace Commissioners was made known. 
He well recalls the time when President Jefferson Davis 
called a meeting at the African Church in Richmond, 
which was filled to overflowing. He commenced his 
memorable and beautiful address upon that occasion by 
stating that " The attitude of the Southern Confederacy 
is that of proud self-reliance." Tall and spare, with 
an eye like an eagle, a Christian gentleman, noted for 
his dignity of character and blameless private life, pos- 
sessed of chivalry equal to that of Chevalier Bayard, 
he was a man in every way well calculated to appeal 
to the feelings and sympathies of the Southern people. 
The walls of the old church echoed and re-echoed to 
the cheers which met his impassioned words. The fatal 
lack of his character was a want of judgment. If at 
the time the Southern Confederacy was formed Virginia 
had been a member, he would probably never have been 
its president. That mantle would probably have been 
placed upon Robert Toombs of Georgia, or Thomas S. 
Bocock of Virginia. If either had been elected it 
would probably have changed the history of the Amer- 
ican continent. 

While performing the unwelcome task of stating the 
blunders of the Southern States of the Union, it is 
almost impossible not to recall the fatal abolition of the 
Missouri Compromise. That celebrated measure had 
staved off and delayed the war between the States of 
this Union for many years. Its abolition not only 
made the war possible ; it may be said to have com- 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 15 

pelled it. After this abolition came the celebrated 
Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court of the 
United States of America. A lawyer by profession, 
and with the highest respect for the court which made 
that decision, I have never believed it to have been 
right or sound, and I think that it was in conflict with 
the spirit of the Constitution, and with well-settled 
principles of jurisprudence. It went too far ; undoubt- 
edly right in many of its aspects, it forced conclusions 
not justified by the facts or the premises, and left the 
people of both sections in a most embarrassing situation. 
Its reasoning is so close and admirable that it is almost 
impossible to pick a flaw in it, and yet the conclusion 
is unsatisfactory. The higher law of human freedom 
should not have been cramped by precedents whose 
merit consisted alone in the veneration given them 
by age. 

Chief Justice John Marshall would, in my opinion, 
never have rendered such a decision. I do not mean 
any reflection upon Chief Justice Taney by this criti- 
cism, made more than forty years after this decision was 
rendered. He was a great and good man, and I can 
say of him with truth, " Nil tetigit quod non ornavit." 

It has been well said that among the evils of slavery 
in the South, and especially in Virginia, may be men- 
tioned the fact that certain families were given a stand- 
ing and preference, on account of their property and 
associations, far beyond their deserts. Turning again 
to the pages of history, we find that the Virginia con- 
vention known as the " white basis convention" 



TJ'E YOUNG BACHELOK. 

counted three-fifths of the Virginia slaves as a 
part of the population, and gave them representa- 
tion to that extent. It was so odious and unjust 
to the western portions of the Commonwealth, settled 
almost exclusively by white people, that it undoubt- 
edly was the cause of the turning away of West Vir- 
ginia from us during the war, and in reality made 
West Virginia a State of the Union. Some counties 
in that section of Virginia voted unanimously against 
the ratification of the Constitution, and the brutal 
Csesarean operation, by which that State was rudely 
torn from the womb of Virginia during the war be- 
tween the States of the Union, would never have been 
performed, but for this miserable three-fifths represen- 
tation, which was wrong upon principle. 

Passion and prejudice caused bad legislation in both 
sections of the Union. It is extremely interesting to 
note the history of legislation in Virginia with reference 
to African slavery. The statutes were wise and humane 
in many instances, especially from 1787 to 1820, but 
as the efforts of the Northern abolitionists became 
greater, the laws with reference to African slavery were 
made more harsh. The unjust selfishness of our North- 
ern brethren in advocating the abolition of African 
slavery, only after they had sold off all of their slaves 
and pocketed the money, was so apparent that it induces 
a feeling of disgust among all thoughtful people. The 
great injustice of abolition, without compensation for 
the slaves, must have been and must remain apparent 
to every honest man and woman in North America, 



THE YOUNG BACHELOE 17, 

and, indeed, in the whole world. England, the mother 
country, had set a far different example. 

The folly of the Northern people culminated in 1860 
in the horrid raid of John Brown. While pursuing 
their peaceful avocations in the broad light of day, in- 
nocent men were shot down at Harper's Ferry, and civil 
war was for the first time inaugurated by this dreadful 
fanatic, on the northern part of the continent. That 
infamous raid was the real commencement of the civil 
war between the States of this Union ; therefore the 
Northern section of this Union is entitled to the credit 
for the commencement of the war — we do not envy 
them this credit. The name of this ruthless fanatic is 
down to this day enshrined by them with a glamour of 
heroism, and yet, long before he came to Harper's 
Ferry, in the solemn hour of the night, in a peaceful 
valley in Kansas, he had left a trail of blood, eleven 
helpless and innocent victims telling the tale of his 
cruel and awful work. How human nature can be- 
come so distorted and degraded as to make a hero of 
this ferocious man can never be understood by the peo- 
ple of Virginia and of the South ; and when he met a 
deserved fate his coffin was covered with garlands of 
flowers, and carried in triumph through the cities of 
the North ; hosannas were sung to his memory, and 
though nearly forty years have elapsed since his memor- 
able raid, he is to-day believed by the descendants of 
the Puritans to have been a hero and a martyr. No 
man who lived in the year 1859-60 in the South can 
ever forget the profound impression created by his raid. 



18 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

" It was enough to stir the fever in the blood of age, 
And make the infant's sinews strong as steel." 

For about a year after the surrender of the Southern 
armies, the condition of the people of the South was 
better than might have been expected. The Northern 
people hesitated for a considerable time before they 
took any drastic action. Alas ! alas ! the Sherman- 
Shellabarger Bill, that Iliad of all our woes, came upon 
us! On March 7, 1866, it was enacted that neither 
House of Congress should admit any member from a 
State which had seceded until it had been declared by 
a Congressional vote to be entitled to representation, 
and the fourteenth amendment to the Federal Consti- 
tution, giving the negroes the right to vote, had to be 
ratified by the legislatures of the seceded States before 
they could be admitted to the Union. A year later, 
namely, on March 2, 1867, an iron law of dreadful 
tyranny and oppression was passed by Congress, supple- 
mented by an act passed on March 19th of the same 
year, placing the South under military rule, giving 
district commanders the control of the registration of 
the voters and the right to call State conventions. 
Then came reconstruction, with all its attendant horrors. 
The negro, under the leadership of despicable and un- 
principled white men, generally of Northern birth, 
awoke from the lethargy of ages. A political hell- 
carnival of crime was commenced and carried on for 
years against the white race with relentless hostility. 
There were no courts, except those appointed by the 
military commanders, and it is a well-known fact that 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 19 

these military officers sometimes issued orders, even in 
chancery causes in the courts, directing certain favored 
claims to be paid. They sometimes went even further 
and issued writs of possession, depriving persons of 
their homes and their property, without due process of 
law ; time and again good citizens were imprisoned upon 
the most baseless charges. Virginia was known as 
Military District No. 1, and her citizens were subjected 
to the most humiliating cruelties. 

The convention which framed the present constitution 
of Virginia, and a miserable piece of patch- work they 
made of it, was composed in great part of the lowest, 
basest and most degraded classes of society. A. minority 
of this convention was composed of gentlemen of the 
very highest order of talent, but they were powerless 
to stem the tide of opposition. The effects of the 
baleful instrument, the Virginia Constitution, still 
lingers with us. Its makers were like ignorant men 
who entered the laboratory of a chemist, and experi- 
mented with its compounds, without in the least know- 
ing the result. They copied the township system of 
thickly settled States like Massachusetts and Connecti- 
cut, and applied this scheme to the rural districts of 
Virginia, with the result that we are to-day over- 
crowded with petty officers, who, knowing that a new 
constitution would be destruction to them, have thus 
far been able to combine and defeat every effort to 
change it. 

It was necessary to give a brief review of the history 
of the years of reconstruction, in order that the reade 



20 THE YOUNG BACHELOK. 

might understand the motives of the conduct of John 
Halifax in the stirring times in which he lived. 

I cannot close this introduction, already too long, 
without alluding to the mighty change which has been 
made for the better in this the year 1898, by one of 
the noblest and most unselfish wars in our history — the 
war of the United States with Spain. That glorious 
war, which arose from the highest and most glorious 
principles of humanity, has cemented the bonds of 
union between the South and the North ; it has given 
rise to a broader and most elevated patriotism, and has 
made a future war between the two sections an impos- 
sibility. Side by side the blue and the gray have met 
the baptism of fire together. By their patriotism and 
their courage, the Stars and Stripes of our Union now 
wave in triumph over Morro Castle and the beautiful 
island of Porto Eico. Our flag kisses the morning 
breeze thousands of miles away in the Orient, and the 
tree of American liberty, watered by the blood of our 
soldiers, has been planted on the soil of a despot. The 
glorious principles of progress, expansion and annexa- 
tion have been emplanted on the Federal Constitution ; 
the same principles which, under the leadership of the 
Democratic party, in 1 844, gave us the splendid domain of 
Texas, and which, at a later date, converted the shifting 
sand-dunes of Yerba Buena into the great and noble city 
of San Francisco, which, still later, entered the Arctic 
Zone, and gave us the almost boundless domain of 
Alaska; it has also given us the beautiful islands of 
lawaii, and soon the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 21 

oceans will meet in Central America by means of the 
Isthmian Canal, which will change the trade of the 
entire world, and will carry forward the prosperity of 
the Southern States of this Union by leaps and bounds ; 
indeed, it almost staggers the imagination to comtem- 
plate the vast benefits which will come to the South 
when this great inter-oceanic canal is finished. Away 
with the senile and impotent spirit of contraction ! The 
Anglo-Saxon goes forward, not backward, in the race of 
life. Who knows, who can foretell, the growth of this 
great Union, netted together by more than two hundred 
thousand miles of railroads? Less than a century 
hence the star-spangled banner will perhaps wave in 
triumph over the entire North American Continent. 
When this is done we will realize on a mighty scale 
the poet's beautiful description of the edging of the 
buckler of Achilles, made by Vulcan : 

"Now the broad shield complete, the artist crowned, 
And with his last hand, poured the ocean round ; 
In living silver seemed the waves to roll, 
And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole." 

That the Cavalier has contributed as much to our 
splendid civilization as the Puritan is one of the chief 
objects of The Young Bachelor to show. The 
pages of history are vouched to show that the Virginia 
cavalier has ever been one of the foremost defenders of 
human liberty and human rights. 



CHAPTER I. 

" I love the American Union ; I love the Northern and the Southern 
sections ; but I love the South more than the North, and I love 
Virginia more than any State on earth." — Benjamin Watkins Leigh. 

Virginia, in 1860, seems to have reached the zenith 
of her prosperity. Her domain extended from the banks 
of the Ohio to the Atlantic ocean. From one end of 
the State to the other her people were contented and 
happy. In literature, in law, in medicine, in science, 
her sons stood in the front rank ; in beauty and accom- 
plishments, her fair women were far and away the best 
in the land. Even her negroes were happy and con- 
tented. The fierce political contests between the two 
great parties, Whigs and Democrats, while spirited, 
were not acrimonious, and were not tainted with the 
least shade of bitterness, and the chains of African 
slavery were so light as hardly to be esteemed a burden. 
A well-regulated Virginia farm of that day and time 
is well worthy of description. 

An average farm of the wealthier classes had about 
a thousand acres of land, with generally from fifty to 
sixty slaves. There were a few farms that had over a 
thousand slaves, but these were the exceptions ; many 
had only ten or twelve. The average farm had always 
an overseer, who generally lived in a neat house to 
himself. He was, in many instances, a man of great 
industry and intelligence. He was well paid, and in- 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. Zo 

vested with great power, which he rarely misused, and 
was almost always true to his trust. He was, in part, 
the outcome of slavery, and so good a citizen did he 
make that many of his decendants are to-day the lead- 
ing people of Virginia. Each negro who was the head 
of a family had a house of his own, with generally an 
acre of land attached, the products of which he owned. 
It was the custom of the owners to give the slaves a 
number of holidays, often three days in every month. 
His family was always comfortably clothed, and they 
had, when ill, the attendance of the best physicians. 
There were almost always three men trained as team- 
sters with three plows worked by mules, and it was the 
duty of these three teamsters to plow every day in the 
year when the season allowed, and this plowing was al- 
ways done with care and judgment. 

There was generally an ox-driver, whose duty it was 
to do the heaviest hauling, especially the manure, in 
the winter and spring, and he also aided in delivering 
the crops. His team generally consisted of three yoke 
of oxen, and it is difficult to estimate the amount that 
they could haul with ease. It was the custom to have 
a trained blacksmith and carpenter, and they were often 
skilled workmen. The carriage-driver generally acted as 
the butler, and was almost always a man of prominence 
in his race. Among the negro women, the seamstress 
and house-servants were selected from the very pick 
and flower of the race, and were generally taught by 
their mistress, and they made house-servants the like 
of which will never, perhaps, be seen again. There 



24 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

was always a good shoemaker, who made the shoes for 
both white and black. The white boys had stitch-down 
shoes for daily wear and welted shoes for Sunday, and 
it is said that for good wear and solid comfort they 
have never been surpassed. The clothes of both white 
and black, in the summer, were made from flax, which 
was woven at every home. The hemp lot was a part 
of every farm, and the flax-hackle and the loom could 
be found on every well-regulated farm. In winter the 
clothes of both races were made from wool taken from 
the sheep raised on the farm, and the shoes were made 
from hides often tanned on the farm. And such clothes 
they were ; for warmth, wear and comfort they have 
never been surpassed. The average white boy was 
clothed, with the exception of his hat (and in many in- 
stances he had a cap made at home), entirely from the farm. 

It was upon a farm like this that I have attempted 
to describe that I first learned the inestimable advan- 
tages of home manufacture. Time has only welded and 
cemented in my mind the principle that the protection 
of American industries is true and sound doctrine. 

The chief money crop was tobacco, and it was grown 
and managed with a skill that made it famous in the 
markets of the entire world. Its cultivation was very 
profitable, and it was managed with consummate skill 
from the plant-bed to the warehouse. But it must not 
be supposed that other crops were not made. On the 
contrary, yields of wheat, corn, oats and hay were made 
which proved that farming operations were often con- 
ducted with the highest skill. The files of the Southern 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 25 

Planter will show that under the slavery regime Vir- 
ginia was among the foremost States from 1840 to 1860 
in the American Union. 

In the vast majority of instances there was the 
kindest feeling between the owner and his family and 
his slaves. Indeed, generally speaking, it was a 
patriarchal family. As I have before stated, the pick 
and flower of the negro families were placed at the 
dwelling house, and they constituted the negro aris- 
tocracy. They were treated with loving kindness and 
affection, and generally deserved it. The old " Mammy " 
was an institution of herself, and was beloved by the 
white children almost as much as their own mother. 
The butler and the dining-room servants carried them- 
selves with an air of hauteur which was both amusing 
and becoming. It was an exquisite amusement for the 
white boys to sneak off on Sunday evenings and holi- 
days with the young negro boys, often fishing, some- 
times hunting or playing marbles, or some other sport. 
The spice of danger with which it was attended added 
to the zest, and made it all the more alluring, for the 
laws of the Medes and Persians were not more certain 
than a sound thrashing of both races if any fishing or 
hunting was done on Sunday. These associations be- 
tween the two races made many lasting friendships, 
which stood us in good stead during the war between 
the States of this Union. 

As a rule, the owners were not cruel to their slaves. 
Nowhere on earth did a negro-trader excite greater 
abhorrence than in Virginia. The cruel scenes so 



26 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

graphically described by the distinguished author of 
Huckleberry Finn, and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
never took place in Virginia. Of course there were 
cruel masters, but they were the exception to the rule. 
I am free to admit that these exceptions, few as they 
were, made slavery wrong on principle. That the Vir- 
ginia negro with a kind master had, generally speaking, 
a happy and contented existence, cannot be denied. It 
is the truth of history. The negro is by nature pos- 
sessed of a singularly gentle and lethargic disposition. 
He soon forgets an insult which would rankle for years 
in the heart of an Anglo-Saxon. During his holidays 
he enjoyed himself to the utmost. The wheat harvest 
was to him one round of pleasure. He knew that the 
finest whiskey was as free as he wished during that 
time, together with the food he liked. Between the 
cradlers there was always a generous rivalry ; indeed, 
it was often difficult to prevent them from over-exertion, 
and the victor was always rewarded. The harvest was 
really to him an athletic game, to which he looked for- 
ward with pleasure. At corn-shucking time there came 
another happy event in his history. It was the custom of 
planters to get together several hundred barrels of corn 
and give notice that they desired the neighbors to help 
them shuck it at night after dark. They came by dozens, 
and until midnight the delightful melody of their songs 
could be heard in the far distance. Some of these old 
ballads ring in my ears to this day, and I have often 
sat for hours and watched this pleasant task. 

The Virginian was not by habit thriftless, as has been 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 27 

so often stated. On the contrary, in many instances, he 
was a man of great business talent. 

The institution of slavery gave rise to a system of 
credit which engendered habits of extravagance, and on 
this account many estates were largely in debt. He 
rarely ever settled with his commission merchant, and 
drew on him as he wished. While this is true of a 
large number, it is also true that a larger number were 
business men of the highest character, and their prompt- 
ness and integrity were noted the world over. 

The Virginian, when he could, always educated his 
children at the best schools of the land — the University 
of Virginia being his favorite, with Yale and Harvard 
as his second choice. He fostered with pride that was 
extraordinary a love and reverence for his ancestors. 
From the very bottom of his heart he prided himself 
that he was descended from cavalier stock. It was 
always to him a source of congratulation that Virginia 
had never yielded to Oliver Cromwell, whom in his 
heart he detested. Because Virginia did not so yield, she 
is known to this day as the " Old Dominion," and it is 
a title which will long be cherished. He always re- 
gretted the unkind seas which prevented Charles the 
Second from reaching Virginia, when he had set sail for 
that purpose, and when that monarch was crowned, one 
of his gowns was manufactured and made for him in 
the county of Gloucester, which the king accepted with 
many expressions of thanks.* His coat of arms and 

* This statement has been controverted. The writer had it direct 
from the late General William B. Taliaferro, who described with mi- 
nuteness the circumstances under which the gown was given to King 
Charles the Second, and the records of Gloucester county will verify it. 



28 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

armorial bearings were all preserved with the greatest 
care. This unconsciously engendered in him a vanity 
and egotism which generally was so absolute as to be 
amusing. He had no idea that anybody on earth could 
be as good as Virginians. Any statement made to the 
contrary was accepted with incredulity, and with a sen- 
timent akin to compassion. In his social duties he was 
the very essence of hospitality. A lover of horses, he 
would walk three miles to catch a horse to ride two 
miles to church. He was never happier than when 
surrounded by his friends. When a visitor came, the 
first act always of the butler, after inviting him in the 
parlor, was to bring a decanter of the best whiskey, and 
some of the old-fashioned cut-loaf white sugar. This 
was an invariable rule, and excited no comment whatever. 

The old county court day was one of the great in- 
stitutions. It was always a day of traffic and trade ; a 
day of law and politics. And, by the way, the old 
county court was composed of the very highest gentlemen 
of the land. Its sentences and judgments were hardly 
ever reversed, and the affairs of each county were man- 
aged with consummate skill, and the greatest economy. 

From 1840 to 1860, Virginia is said to have been 
the most orderly and peaceful community, perhaps, in 
the world. Surely a civilization which accomplished 
such great purposes must have had much in it that was 
good. It may have had, and doubtless did have, its 
faults, but it was a great era, the like of which we 
may never see again. This same civilization gave to 
mankind some of the foremost men of the world. 
Neither in war nor in peace will Virginia shrink from 
a comparison with any English-speaking people. 



CHAPTER II. 



" Of all those arts in which the wise excel, 
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well. 



It was in the year 1857 that John Halifax entered 
the University of Virginia. He was seventeen years 
old ; of excellent physique, with jet black hair and 
eyes, and graceful in his action, he made a handsome 
picture as he matriculated. 

He had been well educated, and fell into the common 
error of taking what is known as " The Green Ticket," 
that is, Latin, Greek and Mathematics. At the end of 
the session he was a sadder and a wiser man, not hav- 
ing obtained a single diploma. We will not follow him 
through his three years course. He did fairly well, 
and developed a talent for oratory, which gained him 
some local renown. 

His residence was in what is known as Southside 
Virginia ; his father, Robert Halifax, was a large slave 
owner, and considered a wealthy planter. He was the 
only child, and the idol of his mother, Mrs. Mary 
Halifax, whose birthplace was in North Carolina. 

Both of his parents were ardent Southern people, and 
engaged eagerly in the preparation for the war between 
the States of this Union. In 1861, when John Halifax 
had determined upon studying law as his profession, 
the tocsin of war sounded ; and true to his birth, he 



30 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

raised, and his father and neighbors equipped, a com- 
pany of infantry, of which he was made captain, and 
his mother bade him a tearful goodbye when he left 
home. He was bright and bold, and when in the far 
distance he raised himself in his stirrups, and lifted his 
hat and waved his handkerchief as a last farewell, he 
hummed the words : 

"When I left thy shore, oh! Buckingham, 
Not a tear did I shed." 

Alas, little did he know of the future that was before 
him ; it was well indeed that it was hid from him by 
an impenetrable veil. When he reached Eichmond in 
June, 1861, he found what might have been considered 
the most unique, the most splendid, and, for its size, the 
most cosmopolitan city in the world. Its normal popu- 
lation was hardly fifty thousand, but then it contained 
more than one hundred thousand people, gathered there 
from every quarter of the globe. Magnificent uniforms, 
the glitter of sabres, the dash of cavalry, the muffled 
tread of infantry, the new-born Confederate flags of 
many different designs, endless bands of music, playing 
the inspiring songs, 

" In Dixie land I'll take my stand," 

and South Carolina's favorite, 

"Hurrah! hurrah! for Southern rights, hurrah! 
We will raise on high the bonnie blue flag, 
That bears the single star," 

combined to make it a scene never to be forgotton. 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 31 

When he reached Camp Lee he saw on the one hand 
that superb battalion, the Washington Artillery, from 
the city of New Orleans, with officers and men all neat 
enough to enter a Fifth Avenue parlor ; the Tenth 
Louisana Infantry, all French, the commands having 
been given in that language ; the First Texas regiment 
of light infantry, with its long-haired officers, wearing 
large slouch hats, and looking the very incarnation of 
war; Georgians, South Carolinians, Virginians, and 
troops from many other States. It is not to be won- 
dered that John Halifax wrote home : " The war will 
soon be over; we have men enough here to march 
straight through to Canada. I only fear it will end 
before my company has time to show its valor." 

It is not the purpose of the writer to follow him 
over the dark and bloody ground upon which he trod, 
for four long and weary years, with valor and distinc- 
tion. The only exception I will make to this rule will 
be a brief description of the battle of Fort Donelson, 
where John Halifax received his first baptism of fire ; 
the only battle of the war which almost brings the 
blush of shame to the cheek of the Confederate veteran, 
and yet it was a battle in which Confederate valor was 
conspiciously shown, and which was lost by the blunders 
of incompetent leaders. 



CHAPTER III. 

"O, now forever 
Farewell the tranquil mind ! farewell content ! 
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars, 
That make ambition virtue ! O farewell ! 
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, 
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, 
The royal banner, and all quality, 
Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war ! 
And, O, ye mortal engines, whose rude throats 
The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, 
Farewell ! Othello's occupation's gone !" 

—Othello, Act III, Scene 3. 

The battle of Fort Donelson will long live in the 
pages of history. Indeed, it may be said to have been 
one of the decisive battles of the war between the States 
of this Union. It was the first great success of the 
Union armies. It cut in twain the fortifications which 
secured to us some of the fairest portions of the South ; 
indeed, it may be said that the effects of this defeat were 
never fully overcome, and the keenest part of the sting 
is, that it was lost by the incompetency of Confederate 
leaders. It may not be out of place to give a brief 
description of this battle, which was so disastrous to 
Southern arms. 

John Halifax was the captain of a company of in- 
fantry in one of the Virginia regiments of General John 
B. Floyd's brigade. That General reached Fort Don- 
elson on the thirteenth day of February, 1862, and, by 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 33 

virtue of his rank, immediately took command, General 
Pillow and General Buckner having preceded him. He 
was placed in command of twenty-eight regiments, the 
very flower of the Southern army in the West. A few 
days prior to that time, General Lloyd Tilghman, hav- 
ing fired hardly more than one or two volleys, surren- 
dered Fort Henry. The extreme rapidity with which 
he surrendered has always been a subject of comment, 
and, while the writer does not desire to criticise him 
harshly, it does not seem to him that there has ever been 
any proper explanation of his conduct on that occasion. 
The situation at Fort Donelson was such, that is, its 
topography was such, that if certain positions adjacent 
to the fort could be captured by the enemy it would be 
untenable by the Confederates. General John B. Floyd 
had, perhaps, twelve hours, and more, in which he might 
and ought to have occupied these positions, but he failed 
to do so. General U. S. Grant, early recognizing this 
fact and the importance of the positions, determined to 
attack at once. He had, at the date of the attack, full 
twenty-three thousand men, increased the next day to 
thirty thousand, while the Confederates never had there 
at any time more than seventeen thousand men, all told. 
Why General Floyd did not, on the thirteenth, attack the 
enemy and secure the positions I have mentioned, be- 
fore they moved against him, no one will probably ever 
know. He could have secured the positions simply by 
occupation, without, probably, making an attack. No 
braver men ever lived than the Confederate soldiers en- 
gaged in that battle, and had General Floyd made the 



34 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

attack on the thirteenth, in all probability Fort Don- 
elson would have been saved to the Confederacy. It 
would have given the Confederates a great advantage 
in position, and with the noble and heroic spirit which 
pervaded the army, would have almost certainly have 
culminated in forcing General Grant to fall back on 
Fort Henry. 

John Halifax, young though he was, caught the situ- 
ation in an instant, with hundreds of others, and chafed 
at the thought that no attack was made. The onslaught 
of the enemy, which was a grand charge, was met with 
stubborn valor. It was the first time that Southern and 
Western men had met face to face upon the field of 
battle, and each fought with a valor which, up to that 
time, had been unparalleled. It is undoubtedly true 
that the loss of the Union army was far greater than 
that of the Confederates, but General Grant was suc- 
cessful in obtaining the positions which he sought. This 
greatly complicated the situation ; the weather was bit- 
terly cold, and the Union army was being constantly 
increased. On the fourteenth Admiral Foot came within 
five hundred yards of the fort and commenced his ter- 
rific bombardment; for hour after hour the combat 
raged with violence • indeed, it may be said that for 
several hours success wavered in the balance. At last 
it was seen that the flag-ship of Admiral Foot was ren- 
dered almost helpless, and a few minutes afterwards the 
same disaster happened to the Louisville ; they became 
unmanageable, and floated helplessly down the Cumber- 
land river. It is said that the eddies turned them 



THE YOUNG BACHELOE. 35 

round like logs, and the sister ships, the Pittsburg and 
the Carondelet, closed in and protected them with their 
hulls. Loud above the roar of battle could be heard 
the cheers of the victorious Confederates. It was an 
extraordinary occasion ; it was the first time on the 
American continent that tremendous gunboats had at- 
tacked a fort at so short a distance, and the result was a 
clear, clean victory for the fort, and conclusively proved 
that gunboats could not withstand the fire of a fort 
commanded and manned as was Fort Donelson ; indeed, 
the fort was never seriously injured. 

General Pillow also attacked the enemy, and he did 
it with brilliancy and success, under the order of Gen- 
eral Floyd ; indeed, he had gained almost a complete 
victory, and opened the road for an honorable and safe 
retreat from the fort ; but while brave, he was a vain 
and shallow-minded man. He was so cocksure that he 
had gained an absolute and conclusive victory that he 
lost his presence of mind, and began to telegraph re- 
sults which had not been accomplished, though he be- 
lieved them to be true, and in the confusion incident 
to battle, he gave General Buckner a wrong order, 
which was carried out with cool judgment and signal 
bravery. Why did not General Floyd evacaute the 
fort on that day when General Pillow had opened the 
way? Who knows? Who can tell? It is difficult 
to describe the folly of his conduct. The precious time 
was lost, and the enemy was again reenforced to over 
thirty thousand men. They moved again and again, 
and here it was that Simon Bolivar Buckner won his 



36 THE YOUNG BACHELOK. 

niche in the temble of fame by several times repulsing 
more than three times his numbers. It must be re- 
membered that we had then barely twelve thousand 
men fit for service, who were confronted by fully 
thirty thousand. Again General Floyd committed a 
great and signal mistake in not attempting to cut his 
way out. With twelve thousand brave and gallant 
soldiers, they would either have marched to victory or 
would have inflicted a stunning blow upon the enemy. 

After the surrender had been agreed upon by the 
Confederate officers, there appeared upon the scene a 
hero whose name will live in song and story. Perhaps 
in neither of the great armies of this country were there 
ever two greater men than N. B. Forrest and Stonewall 
Jackson. He said to General Floyd and his associates : 
"I will never surrender." His ride with his noble 
cavalry across the sunken marsh, where the back-water 
was several feet deep, covered with thin and traitorous 
ice, and with mud practically without limit as to its 
depth, with the thermometer around zero, stands with- 
out a parallel in history. Posterity has crowned his 
brow with the laurel wreath of fame, but it was at Fort 
Donelson that Colonel Forrest laid the foundation of his 
reputation. It has been well said that Forrest and Buck- 
ner were the only leading officers who maintained their 
reputation for courage and judgment at Fort Donelson. 

Of General John B. Floyd it does not become me 
to write ; I will give to him the charity of my silence. 
Broken-hearted, he survived that memorable battle but 
a short time. 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 37 

To show the splendid courage of the troops he had 
surrendered, the morning after the surrender, several 
Federal bands cammenced to play " Dixie " in derision. 
Without arms, in many instances without hats, coats, 
or proper clothing, the Confederate prisoners rushed 
upon them with rocks, sticks, or anything they could 
lay their hands upon ; in an instant the music ceased 
and " Dixie " was played no more. 

On the fated field of Fort Donelson, John Halifax 
felt for the first time the horrors of war, and the bitter 
sting of defeat. On a litter he was carried off to Nash- 
ville, and looked from his room on Cherry street upon 
the partial sacking of that beautiful city, a sacking 
which would have been awful but for the fact that 
Colonel Forrest arrived in the nick of time, and with 
the keen crack of the rifle soon restored order, and 
moved away the remaining Confederates, with a large 
amount of valuable stores. John Halifax, however, 
served long enough in the war to see the Confederate 
armies flushed with victory at Gaines' Mill, the second 
battle of Manassas, and at other places too numerous 
to mention, and last but not least, the second battle of 
Cold Harbor, the most desperate contest, perhaps, of 
the war, where more than six thousand of the Northern 
army lost their lives in sixty-five minutes, and twelve 
thousand more of them were wounded and made 
prisoners in the same short period of time. General 
Grant, who was on horseback, with all his power and 
prestige could not induce them to charge again. They 
had been repulsed certainly four times ; indeed, I am 



38 THE YOUNG BACHELOB. 

of the opinion that they had been repulsed five times. 
I agree with Mr. Swinburne, the historian, in stating 
that when they declined to charge again it was no re- 
flection upon their courage. 

It is not proposed in these pages to allude again, ex- 
cept incidentally, to the battles of the war between the 
States of this Union. I cannot close this chapter bet- 
ter than by re-echoing the sentiment expressed by 
Charles Summer, upon the floor of the United States 
Senate, and I unite and agree with him in his state- 
ment that the names of all the victories on both sides 
should be erased from the battle-flags, and I express 
the wish and hope that the only strife that will ever 
exist again between the two sections of this Union will 
be a generous emulation as to which shall be foremost 
in protecting the American flag and the American 
Union. 



CHAPTER IY. 

" Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before 
kings ; he shall not stand before mean men." — Proverbs. 

John Halifax had a neighbor, who lived within a few 
miles of him, who had, in 1850, moved from Massa- 
chusetts to Virginia. Henry Johnson was, in 1860, 
about sixty years of age ; if one had asked him why 
he made Virginia his home it would have been difficult 
for him to have answered. He had a wife and two child- 
ren ; his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Johnson, was an invalid, a 
kind and gentle woman, who bore her long illness with 
patience and resignation. The son, Edward Johnson, 
was about the same age with John Halifax, and had 
graduated from Harvard College with much distinction. 
He was tall and commanding in his person, with the 
light hair of the Anglo-Saxon ; he was cool in his tem- 
perament, and stubborn in his convictions of what he 
deemed to be right. The daughter, Mary Johnson, 
who can describe her? She was some three years 
younger than her brother, and perhaps a little over the 
usual height ; her hazel eyes and light auburn hair, 
with regular, clean-cut features; her tiny hands and 
beautiful feet ; the grace of her movements, and the 
gentleness of her disposition, combined to make her 
the leading belle of that section. 

This family remained sternly and uncompromisingly 
in favor of the Union ; they were unalterably opposed 



40 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

to the war, and did not hesitate to so state, and they 
had declined ever to hold slaves. Henry Johnson was 
a quiet but stern man ; he attended to his own large 
business, and had but little to do with other people. 
The Union sentiments of himself and his family made 
the situation distasteful and disagreeable. His son, 
Edward Johnson, at the commencement of the war, 
went North, and served as an officer of the Federal 
army with great credit. This fact grated harshly on 
the feelings of his father's neighbors, and while they 
were too refined and polite to say anything disagreeable 
to his face, as they respected the integrity of his pur- 
pose, yet the very excess of their courtesy concealed 
but little the real sting of their manner. The few 
families in Virginia who were honestly true to the 
Union suffered a martyrdom which will long be re- 
membered. It is to be deplored ; but it was inevitable. 

It may not be out of place in this connection to state 
that the number of sincere and honest Union men in 
Virginia and the South has been greatly exaggerated. 
It is almost certain that in Virginia they constituted 
less than one-tenth of the population, and in the more 
Southern States the proportion was, perhaps, still less, 
with the probable exception of a part of North Ala- 
bama, and a part of North Carolina. 

Their position was unique, and in many respects, to 
say the least, extremely disagreeable. Where they 
were known to be sincere they always had the respect 
of their neighbors, who so widely differed from them 
in opinion. 



> 
THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 41 

The proclamation of the President, Abraham Lin- 
coln, calling on Virginia for seventy-five thousand 
troops to coerce her Southern sisters into submission to 
the Union by the use of the bayonet, was like a clap 
of thunder in a clear sky ; it was the feather that broke 
the camel's back, and in an instant converted friends 
into bitter and unrelenting enemies. 

As two high and memorable types of this class of 
original and sincere Union men, I may, with propriety, 
mention two citizens of whom Virginia has ever been 
proud — General Jubal A. Early and Colonel John B. 
Baldwin. They were the very highest types of the 
class I have attempted to describe. Both loved the 
Union ; both were opposed to secession ; and yet, after 
the proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand 
troops from Virginia, they became most earnest and 
determined advocates of revolution, of which war was 
the inevitable consequence. 

Of Colonel Baldwin it may be said that he was in 
many respects one of the greatest intellects, and possi- 
bly the greatest lawyer, ever born in Virginia. He 
was not only an elegant writer, but as an orator he 
possessed few equals and no superior. It has often oc- 
curred to me that he alone, of all Americans, can compete 
with Daniel "Webster for the palm of true and broad 
statesmanship. 

And as to General Jubal A. Early, that famous char- 
acter of American history, who can fitly describe him ? 
Learned in the law, few could compete with him at the 
bar ; so thorough and careful was he in the paths of 



42 THE YOUNG BACHELOE. 

literature that Lord Macaulay alone, perhaps, surpasses 
him in the brilliancy of his ideas and the structure of 
his sentences ; in the grim field of war he first won a 
high and deserved reputation in the Mexican war — a 
reputation to which he immensely added in the war 
between the States of this Union, not only at Gettys- 
burg and Fredericksburg, but on many more hard- 
fought fields. He had all the dash of Murat, coupled 
with the firmness of Massena. 

No man, perhaps, ever lived who had a greater love 
for Virginia and the South. He was called the admin- 
istrator de bonis non administandis of the Confederate 
States of America, and I am sure his friends will con- 
tinue to be proud of the title. 

When men like these two I have mentioned espoused 
the Confederate cause after careful reflection, no one 
can deny that it was without merit. 

I will close this chapter with the statement that one 
hundred years more must elapse before a true history 
of the war between the States of this Union can prop- 
erly be written. 



CHAPTER V. 

"And gaily the Troubadour touched his guitar, 
As he hastened home from the war." — Old Ballad. 

The war was over, the fated field of Appomattox had 
gone into history. With sad and weary hearts the 
Southern veterans went back to their homes. How 
different from that of our Northern brethren ! The one 
was greeted with hosannas, with martial music, with 
garlands of welcome ; the other, in many instances, 
with the ashes of their former homes, with poverty, 
and last but not least, with a servile population sud- 
denly made free, and whose barbarity was only kept in 
check by the well-founded fear of the Southern sabre 
which, though sheathed, yet was always ready to be 
drawn in an instant defence of the supremacy of the 
white race. 

Robert Halifax had sickened and passed away early 
in 1865, his wife soon followed him, and John Halifax 
was left alone in the world. He found that in place 
of wealth gaunt poverty stared him in the face. When 
the long lists of debts were placed before him by his 
father's attorney, he asked : " Can anything be saved?" 
The reply was, nothing but a small tenant farm adjoin- 
ing the main tract, the creditors agreeing to accept the 
magnificent old homestead, which had been in the 
Halifax family for generations, in full satisfaction of 
their claims. 



44 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

It was with a stout heart that John Halifax took up 
his new quarters. The old family butler, Sterling 
Smith, whose wife, Matilda, had been the nurse of her 
young master, followed him, despite his protestations 
that he could not pay them. 

Old Sterling, whose venerable head was gray with 
age, said : " How is I gwine to leave you, Mars John, 
when you is so poor ? I is not gwine to do it." And 
old Matilda who had been his " Mammy," a term well 
known in the days of slavery, spoke up and said : 
" Leff dat chile, now dej done took away all he had ? 
I'll never leave him till de bref leaves me. I told my 
old Missus I was gwine to take care of him, and I is 
gwine to to it. Dere is a very good cabin on de place." 
Sterling said, " Mars John, Tildy is right." 

What could John do? It would well nigh have 
broken the hearts of these faithful negroes, who had 
been the honored and trusted servants of his people, if 
he had refused their request. They belonged to a class 
that is fast passing away; they were selected to wait 
upon the house and the family because of their good 
character and intelligence. They became intensely fond 
of their white owners, and the feeling was almost al- 
ways reciprocal. They looked upon themselves as rep- 
resenting the dignity of the family, and there is not 
recorded, so far as is known to the writer, a single in- 
stance of their deserting their masters during the war 
between the States of this Union. 

It was one of the bright spots in slavery, and is the 
real reason why a kindly feeling has always existed in 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 45 

the South between the two races. Who is there who 
lived in Virginia in 1865 and does not remember the 
curious scenes that surrounded him at that period? 
With no clothes save the remnants of their uniforms ; 
with corn at ten dollars in specie a barrel, with no money 
to buy it; with provost marshals and Federal bayonets 
at every door, the people of the South commenced to 
learn a new and important lesson. 



CHAPTEK VI. 

"In peace, love tunes the shepherd's reed ; 
In war, he mounts the warrior' s steed : 
In halls, in gay attire is seen ; 
In hamlets, dances on the green; 
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, 
And man below, and saints above ; 
For love is heaven, and heaven is love." 

— Sir Walter Scott. 

John Halifax had known Mary Johnson from her 
early youth. They had been to school together. One 
day she laughingly asked him if he intended to remain 
a " Young Bachelor," as he had often before avowed 
his purpose ? His answer was, " Who knows ? " As 
she grew into beautiful womanhood, he admired her 
more and more. He bitterly regretted the political 
feeling which caused a coldness between the families, 
and tried not to notice the cold looks of old Henry 
Johnson when he visited his house. 

The war had left that family richer than before ; the 
old gentleman was a shrewd financier, and invested his 
money in Northern securities. 

Week after week found John Halifax at her side, 
even after he had moved to his humble home. There was 
no special love between him and her brother, and the old 
gentleman, while polite, was far from cordial. John 
chafed under this, but when he. thought of the hazel 
eyes that tempted him like a magnet, he built air-castles, 



THE YOUNG BACHELOK. 47 

and sat at her feet, dreaming of the unknown future. 
They were translating together Chateaubriand's Atala, 
she being an excellent French scholar. This was a 
dangerous business. Though all the world was in a 
foment ; though the cold looks of her father and mother 
were far from reassuring, their world was different ; 
they dreamed and dreamed and lived under the halo of 
love, though no word of love had ever been spoken. 
Is not love the guiding principle of heaven ? 

Mary was gentle and kind in her manner ; she had 
been almost a guardian angel to many sick and wounded 
Confederate soldiers in her neighborhood. No word 
did she speak that grated on their feelings, and one and 
all loved her for her true nobility and generosity of 
character. A woman who is at once beautiful, gener- 
ous and accomplished is the very essence of all creation. 
The noblest of men looks like a pigmy in comparison. 
Far and near had spread the knowledge of the kind 
deeds of Mary Johnson, and no word save that of kind- 
ness was ever spoken about her ; indeed, it was in the 
humble cottages of the poor that her name was espe- 
cially mentioned with fond affection. Other and more 
wealthy suitors than John Halifax had come time and 
again. They met with kindness, courtesy and consid- 
eration, but one by one they left to come no more. 
Did Mary Johnson have in her heart a tender feeling 
for her poor school companion ? Did her eye brighten, 
and her heart beat quicker as she watched him in the 
distance, coming, as she well knew, to see her alone? 
Who can tell? 



48 TJIE YOUNG BACHELOE. 

At last the suspicions of her father were aroused, and 
he told her in plain terms that he wished John Halifax 
to be no son-in-law of his. He said : " He is without 
a profession, without means, and is not the person I 
wish you to marry." Mary said : " Father, not a word 
has he ever spoken to me on the subject. He is our 
neighbor, and a pleasant companion, and a gentleman 
by birth and education, and I have given him no en- 
couragement. " 

My fair reader, did Mary tell the whole truth ? The 
sequel will show. 



CHAPTER VII. 

" Give me neither poverty nor riches."— Proverbs. 

John Halifax had reached that state of mind when 
he was smarting under the coldness of the rela- 
tives of her whom he knew to be dearer to him than 
all the world. They were rich, he was poor, and for 
the first time in his life he felt the sting and the 
humiliation of poverty. He had heard vague hints 
from his associates, and it had been reported to him 
that it was common rumor that he proposed to better 
his fortunes by marrying the daughter of his rich 
Northern neighbor, and it was intimated that some- 
thing other than sentiment prompted the act. This 
stung him to the quick, and on his last visit, with this 
feeling in his mind, he thought he noticed a decided 
coldness on the part of Mary, which intimated that his 
attentions had become irksome. Proud and haughty 
from his youth, he made up his mind that his love was 
hopeless, and he determined never again to expose 
himself to humiliation. He knew that to break off his 
visits suddenly would attract attention, and he deter- 
mined upon a wiser course ; he would withdraw his at- 
tentions by degrees. Many sleepless nights and untold 
agony of mind this resolution cost him, but he resolved 
that he would carry it out. A little incident after this 
resolution nearly precipitated a crisis, and came in a 
hair's breadth of destroying his resolve. 



50 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

He had not visited her for several weeks, and as he 
came near the house, he saw her starting out of the 
yard on a young and fiery horse. She was a bold and 
elegant rider; but she had hardly cleared the yard 
when, owing to a sudden fright, her horse bounded for- 
ward, and became unmanageable. John caught the 
situation in an instant. He did not attempt to sud- 
denly check her horse, but waiting for him to come up, 
he caught hold of the reins, and by degrees brought 
him under subjection. "Oh! John, you have saved 
my life!" Such was her exclamation, her eyes beaming 
with gratitute as she gave him a look which pierced 
the very depths of his soul, and he was about to fling 
consequences to the wind, and make the offer of his 
hand, when her father rode up and said, " I thank you 
very sincerely, Captain Halifax, for the timely assist- 
ance you have given my daughter. But for your as- 
sistance, the consequences might have been serious." 
" I rejoice," said John, " that I had the opportunity to 
be of some service." 

Mary was too much unnerved by the exploit of the 
morning to appear again. Moody and discontented, 
John thought this a good time to quit, and he left the 
house with the grim resolve never to enter it again, 
as an aspirant for the hand of her whom he loved with 
all the ardor of his nature. 

The sequel will show how well he kept his resolu- 
tion. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

: She was a form of life and light, 
That, seen, became a part of sight ; 
And rose, where'er I turned mine eye, 
The Morning-star of memory. 
Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven ; 

A spark of that immortal fire 
With angels shared, by Allah given, 

To lift from earth our low desire." 



— Byron. 



Human vanity is possessed, to a certain degree, by 
all mankind. John Halifax was no exception. 

When he looked around him, and felt that his little 
house, with a small lot of land, was all that was left him 
by the rude fortune of war, he reflected upon the fact 
that he dared not ask Mary Johnson to come to that 
humble home as his bride. And her stern, grim old 
father, would he ever agree to it ? Alas ! alas ! in his 
heart John Halifax felt that would hardly be possible. 

Then pride came to his assistance, and he determined 
to study the high and great profession of the law. He 
had already, from time to time, done some casual read- 
ing under the tutelage of an elderly and retired lawyer, 
who resided in his neighborhood. From this time 
henceforward he determined to study it with all the 
vigor of which he was capable. And he did, devoting 
himself at least eight hours a day to study and careful 
reading. As the knowledge of the great science un- 



52 THE YOXJXG BACHELOR. 

folded itself to him (for the law is a science) he became 
more and more interested in it. 

Some two months had elapsed since his last memor- 
able visit to Mary Johnson, and his absence had begun 
to excite some remark. Not an hour, and hardly a 
moment, of that time had elapsed during which her 
image was not before his mind. She had often play- 
fully twitted him with his intention of becoming a 
bachelor. He felt that he was fast becoming, not a 
young, but an old bachelor. 

At last, on a bright spring morning, he could stand 
it no longer. As he rode up to the house he saw her 
with a watering pot in her hand, watering her flowers. 
He looked at her through the blossoms of the crimson 
rambler rose, and his heart redoubled its pulsations. 
No rose, thought he, was as fair and beautiful as his 
love. She met him with quietness and gentleness. 
Oh! how dangerous can a woman become when she is 
both beautiful and talented ! Paler than usual, she 
gently grasped his hand, as she invited him to take a 
seat. They were alone. A gentle breeze was rustling 
the leaves among the trees ; it was one of those spring 
days which come so seldom, when nature was at her 
best. What man or woman is there on earth who is 
not happier in beautiful weather ? John Halifax and 
Mary Johnson felt the effects of it. 

Said she : " Captain Halifax, it has been some time 
since we had the pleasure of a visit from you. I am 
glad to see you, and to thank you for saving my life 
when last we met." 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 53 

"I beg, Miss Mary, that you will not mention it. 
From the very bottom of my heart I am delighted that 
I was able to be of some assistance." 

" Why have you not visited us sooner?" 

" My excuse is that I have at last commenced upon 
the business of my life. I have commenced to study 
law ; indeed, for several months I have been studying 
it from time to time, and recently with great vigor." 

"We had heard something to that effect before, 
Captain Halifax, and I congratulate you upon your 
choice of a profession, though, albeit, I should imagine 
the study of its precepts not to be very inviting." 

" There you are wrong, Miss Mary ; it offers the 
highest prizes to ambition. The lawyers of the Eng- 
lish speaking race have ever been the foremost de- 
fenders of human liberty and human rights. Although 
long before his time there had been great lawyers, Sir 
William Blackstone may be considered the pioneer of 
modern constitutional liberty." 

" Well," said she, with a smile, " I know but little 
about him, but at one time in his life I am satisfied that he 
made a wise and splendid exhibition of his judgment." 

Anxious to know what this beautiful young girl, 
who was remarkably well read, knew about Sir William 
Blackstone, he asked her : " Why do you make this 
remark?" 

She answered : " I was at one time tempted to read 
some of his poetry, and when I read his ' Farewell to 
my Muse/ I became satisfied that he exercised splendid 
judgment in abandoning poetry for law." 



54 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

Laughing, he said : "I cannot help agreeing with 
you. You remind me of an amusing incident of my 
college days, which I had forgotten. I had a hand- 
some room-mate at the University of Virginia, who, 
for some cause, took it into his head that he was a poet. 
He was deeply in love with a beautiful young lady, a 
Miss Minnie B., of Amelia county, Virginia. After 
many efforts, he succeeded in composing a few verses 
addressed to her ; with great gusto, he brought them to 
me, and said : ' John, I want you to carefully read 
these verses' (they were extremely love-sick) ; c there is 
a great deal of truth in them/ After reading them, I 
answered and said : ' Billy, there is a great deal more 
truth than poetry in them ! ' This remark was over- 
heard, and he never heard the last of it. The verses 
were published in the University Magazine, and oc- 
casionaly some wag would hand him a copy, with the 
remark : i Billy, is there not a great deal of truth in 
these verses ? ' It stilled the voice of his muse forever, 
and it has sometimes occurred to me that I cut short 
the career of a great poet." 

The hours passed swiftly ; the sun was about to set. 
With a sigh John Halifax requested that she would 
play one or two favorite tunes before he left. She sang 
beautifully, and she was an excellent performer on the 
piano. With splendid power she played and sang that 
beautiful old song, " Mary of Argyle." Feeling deeply 
the effect of the words and the air of that dear old song, 
he asked her to sing her favorite tune. 

" Well," said she, " there is one piece written by a 



THE YOUNG BACHELOE. 55 

comparatively unknown Virginian, who formerly lived 
in the city of Lynchburg, the words of which are so 
inexpressibly touching that it is impossible for me to 
sing it without deep feeling ; the music to which it has 
been set is not so good, but yet it is appropriate." 

"What is it? "he asked. 

" Wait and see," she replied. 

Then, with a pathos and feeling which was not 
feigned, but real, she sang the words of that immortal 
poem : 

' ' P d offer thee this hand of mine, 

If I could love thee less, 
But hearts soVarm, so fond as thine, 

Should never know distress. 
My fortune is too hard for thee, 

'T would chill thy dearest joy; 
I'd rather weep to see thee free 

Than win thee to destroy. 

' ' I love thee in thy happiness, 

As one too dear to love — 
As one I think of but to bless, 

As wretchedly I rove, 
And oh ! when sorrow' s cup I drink, 

All bitter though it be, 
How sweet 't will be for me to think, 

It holds no drop for thee ! 

"And now my dreams are sadly o'er, 

Fate bids them all depart, 
And I must leave my native shore, 

In brokenness of heart. 
And oh, dear one ! when far from thee, 

I'll ne'er know joy again, 
I would not that one thought of me 

Should give thy bosom pain." 



56 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

As she finished, John Halifax commenced to turn 
over the leaves of the music for her. A tell tale tear 
dropped full upon the page. 

With a voice quivering with emotion she said, " How 
is this, Captain Halifax ? " 

He immediately told a horrid lie. He said, while 
coughing violently to hide his emotion, " I have been 
suffering recently, Miss Mary, with a dreadful cold, 
which sometimes brings tears to my eyes." Alas ! 
alas ! poor, weak human nature ! Did not the record- 
ing angel himself drop a tear as he recorded the charge 
against John Halifax for this lie about the cold ? 

He did not deceive his love ; with a woman's tact 
she knew. Indeed, she had, knowing his indomitable 
pride of character, long since understood his feelings 
and the reason for his conduct. She bade him good- 
bye with such gentleness that it brought on another 
effort at coughing. She said, "Captain Halifax, you 
ought to take care of that cold — it needs attention." 
He promised her that he would. 

When he found himself he was riding at a fearful rate 
on his way home. Away down in his heart he knew that 
she did not believe that lie about the coughing, for the 
trace of the tear on the book was plain and manifest. 

" Oh ! " said he to himself, " what an abominable 
fool I am ! " By a tremendous effort he renewed his 
resolution, and determined that this should be his last 
visit as a lover to the home of that lovely woman, whose 
image was forever interwoven with the very tendrils of 
his heart. Such is life ! 



CHAPTER IX. 

"Reason is the life of the law: nay, the common law itself is 
nothing else but reason — the law which is the perfection of reason." 
— Sir Edward Coke. 

"The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as 
well for his defence against injury and violence as for his repose." — 
Sir Edward Coke. 

"The poorest man may, in his cottage, bid defiance to all the 
forces of the crown. It may be frail ; its roof -may shake ; the wind 
may blow through it ; the storms may enter ; the rain may enter ; 
but the King of England cannot enter ; all his forces dare not cross 
the threshold of the humblest tenant!" — Speech of William Pitt, 
Earl of Chatham, on the Excise Bill. 

A year and more has passed, during which time John 
Halifax had visited but seldom the home of Mary 
Johnson. 

He had been admitted to the bar of Virginia, which 
was District No. 1. No man could then hold office in 
Virginia unless he could swear that he had no sympa- 
thy with the South or its cause during the war between 
the States of our Union. It brought to the surface the 
lowest and most degraded classes of society. One of its 
worst effects was that it broke the bond of love and 
sympathy, the outgrowth of over two hundred years of 
slavery, which existed between the whites and the 
negroes. This statement is subject to a certain quali- 
fication ; it left in partial existence the bond of sym- 
pathy between the old negroes and their former owners, 
who to-day regard their former masters with love and 
affection. 



58 THE YOUNG BACHELOK. 

It is not my purpose to detail the struggles of John 
Halifax as he slowly won his way at the bar. One of 
his first cases was before a reconstructed court, com- 
posed in part of the material I have attempted to de- 
scribe. For the purpose of showing that material I 
will attempt to describe the presiding justice of that 
singular tribunal. Tall and dignified in appearance, 
elegantly educated, as he sat, with his faultless linen 
and superb gold spectacles, he looked the very embodi- 
ment of an ideal judge. He had, prior to the war, been 
a Federal office-holder. Though he claimed during the 
war to be a Southern sympathizer, and probably was, it 
was no sooner over than he took the ironclad oath and 
became the military appointee to the judicial office he 
held. 

After several terms of his court had elapsed, over 
which he presided with courtesy and dignity, it became 
necessary on one occasion for his grand jury to bring in 
their indictments. When the foreman appeared the 
Chief Justice asked, " Gentlemen, have you any indict- 
ments?" The foreman replied and stated that they 
had, and, among others, a true bill had been found 
against his Honor. 

" For what am I indicted ? " said he. 

The foreman replied, " For the larceny of a hog ? " 

He bowed and turned to his associates and said, 
" Gentlemen, it would not be right for me to sit in this 
case, and I turn it over to you." 

The chief witness against him was a mail rider. For 
the purpose of destroying his evidence the Chief Jus- 



THE YOUNG BACHELOK. 59 

tice suborned some testimony and had the mail carrier 
arrested, charged with robbing the mail. The accused 
person employed John Halifax to defend him, which 
he did with signal ability, resulting in his acquittal, and 
the Chief Justice was found guilty of the larceny of the 
hog, and was punished by a light sentence. 

Even at this late day it is not pleasant to mention 
these incidents of reconstruction. There was never 
anywhere anything like it in the history of the English- 
speaking race. Labor was disorganized, and the courts 
were well-nigh a farce. On one occasion in the county 
in which John Halifax resided the commanding officer 
directed the acting Circuit Judge to enter an order 
giving to a negro politician who was a party to a suit 
the sum of one thousand dollars, and it was done, 
though the case was not ready, and the act was grossly 
illegal and unjust. It is also true that in one of the 
adjoining counties a writ of possession, without the ex- 
istence of any suit whatever, was issued and put into 
effect by one of these commanding officers. 

Then came the free ballot and the commencement of 
the long, dark reign of negro rule. 

On one occasion, while an elegant gentleman was 
sleeping in the same room with John Halifax at the 
county seat, he asked, upon arising in the morning, " Is 
it true, Captain Halifax, as I hear, that you have negro 
magistrates ? " 

Captain Halifax replied, " Wait a moment and I will 
show you." He then called in a loud voice for " Jim." 
A black, ragged old negro appeared, and Captain Hali- 



60 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

fax said to him, " Jim, I want you to arrest this gen- 
tleman," pointing to his friend. 

" Sah," said Jim, " I doesn't like to Vest white folks. 
Sah, please sense me." 

Now, Jim was really a magistrate, and he was also 
the bootblack who blacked the shoes of Captain Hali- 
fax and his company. The gentleman, who was the 
guest of Captain Halifax, could hardly believe the 
statement. 

"Well," said he, "this is the veriest farce I have 
ever seen. It cannot last." 

"Ah ! " said Captain Halifax, u it is a farce which 
would soon end in a tragedy but for the stern deter- 
mination of the Anglo-Saxon race." 

Who can tell the suffering of a great and brave 
people during the awful ordeal of reconstruction ? It 
will, in fact, never be really known. It must be borne 
in mind that years elapsed after the war was over before 
the negroes were invested with the right of suffrage. 
Coming, as it did, when their passions were aroused by 
new-found freedom, it commenced an era so hideous 
with crime that it will ever remain the blackest record 
in American history. But, after all, the Anglo-Saxon 
has not only survived, he has commenced an era of 
prosperity in the South, and, above all, in dear old 
Virginia, which is likely to be without a parallel. 

It is perhaps no idle prophecy to state that the power 
given us by the fifteenth amendment to the Federal 
Constitution will turn out to be a blessing. 



CHAPTER X. 

" What lost a world, and bade a hero fly ? 
The timid tear in Cleopatra's eye ; 
Yet should the false Triumvir's faults be forgiven, 
For by this many lose, not earth, but heaven." 

— Byron. 

John Halifax came from lofty lineage. Up to the 
present moment of his existence he had never known 
want. His proud spirit chafed under the res angusta 
domi to y/hich he had never been accustomed. Ter- 
rible as was the struggle, he kept his resolution, and 
cut short his visits to the house which contained the 
jewel for which he w T ould have willingly given all that 
is dear in life. 

Since the tear-drop from his eye had moistened the 
page of music as Mary Johnson sung those beautiful 

words, 

"I would offer thee this hand of mine, 
If I could love thee less," 

he had seen her but twice, and on his last visit he was 
struck with her apparent coldness. Evidently she had 
resented in some degree his apparent neglect. 

In silence and maidenly modestly she suffered even 
more than John. With a keen appreciation of his feel- 
ings, she judged the motives which actuated him ; no 
word escaped her lips, but the tell-tale marks of pale- 
ness on her features told a tale which could not be 
mistaken. 



62 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

A rivalry had already sprung up at the bar between 
Captain Halifax and Edward Johnson, who had com- 
menced the practice of law some years before John 
Halifax, and was succeeding well in his profession. 
He was the leading Republican of the county, and the 
idol of the negroes. He represented his county in the 
legislature of Virginia, and looked forward to still 
higher honors. Deep and bitter was the feeling of the 
better class of white people against him, but it could 
not be said of him that he pandered to the passions of 
the populace. He was from principle a Republican, 
and doubtless believed firmly in the theories he so 
ardently advocated. This did not in the least deter 
the deep and determined feeling of hostility of the 
ancient land-owners, who looked upon him, not only as 
the embodiment of anarchy, but of a sentiment hostile 
to what they believed to be the very basis of law and 
order. And they were no mean opponents. Cool and 
polite in their demeanor, they were ever ready to resort 
to the code of honor, or any other prompt means of 
settling the slightest insult ; educated and accomplished, 
they knew how to use the weapons of sarcasm and 
ridicule, so that the sting of their words left many a 
festering sore, which time itself could hardly heal. 
Though they were in a minority, they dug their rowels 
deep into the tendrils of the party in power. The path 
of success for the opposition was strewn by them with 
many a thorn. And who can blame them? They saw 
their bootblacks and dining-room servants elevated to 
law-makers, and an inferior and servile race placed, not 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 63 

only on an equality, but above them in their legal 
rights. 

The well-known Civil Rights Bill, afterwards pro- 
nounced unconstitutional, was the feather which broke 
the camePs back ; it was a ring placed in the nose of 
every Southern gentleman, to be pulled by every un- 
principled negro at his pleasure. Fierce and terrible 
was the indignation it excited in the hearts of the 
Southern white people. The English vocabulary was 
enriched by new epithets of abuse heaped upon the 
Republican, or negro party, as it was called, and in the 
altercations which occurred, the superior valor of the 
cavalier struck terror into the hearts of their adversaries. 

It was in this state of things that, on a memorable 
county court day, a large crowd had assembled, and 
Edward Johnson was making a political harangue, 
when his language became offensive, and, upon his con- 
clusion, loud calls were made for John Halifax ; pale 
and determined, he mounted the rostrum. He com- 
menced by saying : 

" This still is Virginia ; it is still the land of Wash- 
ington, of Henry, of Madison, of Jefferson, and, above 
all, of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. We 
look upon the same nature, the same scenes, and we 
breathe the same air they did ; we must prove to the 
world that the spirit of freedom still lingers in our 
midst, and that the memory and the deeds of an illus- 
trious ancestry have not been forgotten. Two hundred 
and fifty years ago the Puritans first brought the negro 
from Africa; for centuries the ancestors of the dis- 



64 THE YOUNG BACHELOE. 

tinguished gentleman who has just preceded me dealt 
in the purchase and sale of their bodies, and as long as 
it was profitable, no word was heard against African 
slavery ; after they had sold at an immense profit every 
one they owned, then abolitionism, and a desire to free 
the negro, was a sentiment which bloomed and blos- 
somed like a green bay tree. 

" Now, with an edict more cruel and more unrelent- 
ing than that of Omar, they have invested these freed- 
men with the right of suffrage, and it is to this ignorant 
class, to their passions and prejudices, that the dis- 
tinguished gentleman who has preceded me has appealed. 

"He too, is a philanthropist of the modern kind. 
He wishes to leap into power with the aid of the votes 
of these new-made suffragans, so that he can taunt us 
still further with legislation, the object of which is to 
degrade the free Anglo-Saxon people of the South." 

" That statement is false," shouted Edward Johnson. 
Quick as lightning, John Halifax struck him fairly in 
the face, and the crowd interfered, and prevented a 
further struggle. 

The meeting dispersed, and a few moments after- 
wards, at his hotel, John Halifax was handed the fol- 
lowing note : 

" May 5, 1871. 
"John Halifax, Esq.: 

' ' Sir — The occasion of this morning can have but one termination. 
This note will be handed you by my friend. The choice of weapons 
is at your command, and the only request I venture to make, is that 
the meeting may take place at the earliest possible date. 
" Your obedient servant, 

"Edward Johnson." 



CHAPTER XI. 

" The world is a comedy to those who think ; a tragedy to those 
who feel." — Horace Walpole. 

There is nothing in the world more universal than 
the spirit of change. It is a part of nature. Principles 
alone remain the same. For more than two hundred 
years duelling existed in Virginia. It existed among 
the very best classes of people. It was defended in the 
most ingenious and plausible manner. It was stated 
that the object of duelling was not to take the life, or 
even to wound your adversary; this was an incident, 
not an object, and the party inflicting the wound was 
more to be pitied than the party receiving it ; that the 
true object of duelling was to defend one's honor, and 
as life was the highest stake we possessed, except honor, 
it was emiuently proper that life should be risked in 
behalf of honor. It is stated, upon high authority, that 
in the colonial days of Virginia even a minister of the 
Gospel of the established church could not resist a 
challenge, and fell a victim to this execrable practice. 
It is difficult to refrain from expressing the desire that, 
if this practice is ever to obtain again on this earth, it 
may be confined wholly to the political parsons who, in 
every political canvass, desecrate the pulpit by spouting 
their venom against those who oppose them. If con- 
fined to this particular class perhaps it might not be an 
unmixed evil. 



66 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

Distinguished generals of the American Revolution, 
and, at a later date, the Duke of Wellington, engaged 
in the practice. John Randolph of Roanoke, and many 
other great men, did not dare to decline a challenge. 
It has always required a far greater amount of courage 
to decline than to accept a challenge. Public senti- 
ment, slowly and by degrees, for more than fifty years, 
has been placing the seal of condemnation upon this 
wretched and wicked custom, and the time has now 
come when it is looked upon with the horror it so 
justly deserves. 

John Halifax received the challenge with mingled 
feelings of anger and mortification. How could he fire 
upon the brother of her who was dearer to him than all 
the world ? It did not take more than a moment's 
reflection for him to determine that, happen what would, 
his adversary should suffer no hurt at his hands. 

At heart John Halifax was opposed to duelling, and 
he had often so stated. He knew that it settled nothing 
and was a relic of barbarity, and he was loth to engage 
in a practice which did not meet the approbation of his 
conscience. He knew that if he declined it his useful- 
ness and, indeed, his reputation for courage in Virginia, 
was gone forever. He knew that he could never explain 
the reasons which caused him to decline. He therefore 
returned the following note : 

"May 5, 1871. 
" Edward Johnson, Esq. : 

"Sir — Your note was duly received. This reply will be handed 
you by my friend, who is fully authorized to act for me, and pistols 
are selected as the weapons, and ten paces as the distance. The 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 67 

meeting will take place in the valley of the Dell, on the border of 
Whispering creek, at the hour of sunrise to-morrow morning, or at 
an earlier date, if desired. " Your obedient servant, 

"John Halifax." 

The Dell was a small but beautiful valley, situated 
about two miles from the county seat. It was a quiet, 
sequestered spot, and the gurgling little stream which 
ran through it was known by the charming name of 
" Whispering Creek." The sun rose clear on that fatal 
morning. It had a gorgeous robe of red, emblematic, 
it would seem, of the bloody work that was about to be 
performed. The dewdrops glistened like diamonds on 
the grass ; a gentle wind sighed through the foliage ; 
birds of beautiful plumage vied with each other in their 
morning songs ; the dove was cooing for his mate ; the 
partridge was making the welkin ring with his clear 
and resounding calls ; all nature was at its best, and 
man alone was present to mar the innocence and beauty 
of the scene. 

With quietness and solemnity the ground was meas- 
ured off. Edward Johnson was pale, but the glitter of 
his eye showed that the remembrance of that stinging 
blow in his face rankled in his mind ; upon the coun- 
tenance of John Halifax there was a stern cast, and he 
was cool and self-possessed. 

"Are you ready, gentlemen ? " rang upon the air. 
" One, two, three — fire ! " 

Two pistol shots rang out clean and clear upon the 
morning air. John Halifax reeled, staggered and fell 
to the ground. He had fired high into the air. 



68 THE YOUNG BACHELOE. 

That morning, just before he reached the duelling 
ground, he handed his second a note, and made him 
promise not to read it until the duel was over. In that 
note he stated that he was opposed to duelling on prin- 
ciple, but that he had not seen his way clear to decline 
the challenge, and that he had made up his mind not 
to fire upon his adversary, but to fire in the air. 

In an instant, with blanched countenances, all rushed 
to the fallen man. The blood was trickling from a 
wound in his right side, and he was unconscious. 

At this moment the rapid steps of a horse were heard. 
A moment more and Mary Johnson, her hair stream- 
ing in the wind, her face flushed with excitement, 
appeared upon the scene. She sprang unassisted to the 
ground and rushed to the spot where the wounded man 
lay bleeding and unconscious. 

She turned to her brother and said, " Oh ! my brother, 
is this your fatal work ? " He turned away in silence. 
She kneeled by the side of John Halifax and placed 
his head in her lap and bathed his forehead, and when 
he was restored to semi-consciousness and looked at her 
a gentle smile stole over his features, and he murmured 
the words, " Mary — darling — love," and fainted away 
again. Her tears dropped upon his pallid cheeks, and 
few were the eyes that were dry upon that occasion. 
Slowly and tenderly they lifted his prostrate form and 
carried him to his humble home. 

Picture an humble little cottage with three rooms 
and two small houses in the yard, with the garden and 
yard fences in a sad state of neglect, with two or three 



THE YOOTG BACHELOR. 69 

fields in cultivation, and you see the home of John 
Halifax, from which he can look forth at the stately 
mansion which was the home of his birth and the home 
of his ancestry. 

The physicians stated that his wound was a desperate 
one, and the prospect of his recovery extremely doubt- 
ful, and that all depended upon careful nursing ; that 
he must not be balked in anything, and that his slight- 
est wish, if possible, should be gratified. 

More than a month has elapsed, and he is still weak 
and faint, his fever rising each evening. It was always 
accompanied with partial delirium, and often he calls 
for " Mary " in a tone calculated to excite the deepest 
emotion. His faithful old mammy, Tildy, did her best. 
When he was brought home on a litter the tears ran 
down her shrivelled old cheeks, and she cried out : " Is 
this my blessed young master ? Who is it done dis 
awful thing ? " She stooped over him, and kissed him 
on his forehead and said, " Oh ! Mars John, what would 
my dear old missus say if she could see you now ? " 
Sterling felt as keenly as she did, but repressed his 
emotions. 

That night, as the quaint old couple talked together, 
Tildy said, " Sterling, kin you tell me why white folks 
shoots each other when dey aint no war ? " Sterling 
said, " Tildy, aint you never larnt dat white folks is 
higher strung den culled people, and fights for what 
dey calls honor ? " Tildy said : " What is dat dey calls 
honor, Sterling ? Will it buy a breakfast, or a dinner, 
or a supper ? Will it clothe you and feed you when 



70 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

you is in need ? " Sterling raised himself to his full 
height and said : " Tildy, I is nat' rally ashamed of you. 
Has you lived with our great white folks so long and 
not know what honor is ? Talk about buying break- 
fusses ! It am worth all de breakfusses dat was ever 
eat. It is higher den money. Honor is character, dat's 
what it am, and it's de highest kind of character. De 
man dat aint got it aint no man at all. De man dat 
has honor won't lie and won't steal to save his life. I 
don't blame Mars John for fighting ; I blame him for 
shooting in de a'r. My old master wouldn't shot in no 
a'r. I tell you, Tildy, de young people in dese times 
ain't equal to de old ones. Shoot in de a'r ! Who ever 
heard of such a thing, and t'other man shooting at him ? 
I tell you, Tildy, it ain't nat'ral." Tildy was awed by 
this long speech, and said no more. 

Where was Mary Johnson all this time ? Not a day 
had elapsed from the time John Halifax was brought 
home that she was not at his bedside. She listened to 
the ravings of his delirium, and when he called for 
Mary the tear would trickle on her cheek, and she 
would say, " Oh ! John, I am here." But it was noted 
that when he recovered his faculties no word of love 
was mentioned by him, but he received her attentions 
with a singular gentleness that was in itself pathetic. 

He was slowly but surely weakening day by day, and 
unless a change should occur the end was not far distant. 



CHAPTER XII. 

"To err is human ; to forgive, devine." — Pope. 

The shadows of evening were beginning to lengthen j 
with the burning fever on his brow, John Halifax was 
wandering in vague delirium ; he was a child again, 
and he cried out, " Mary, we will be late for school, 
but I have brought you the violets, and O, Mary ! I 
kissed them one by one, but you did not know it." 

His mood changes : he is in the height of battle; he 
is again charging up the heights of Gettysburg ; he 
gives the command, " Charge ! men, charge ! " In 
his excitement he rises up in the bed, and falls back 
fainting from exhaustion. His breathing becomes weak 
and thick and the clammy death-damp has settled on 
his broAV. Mary, with a tearless face, for her agony 
was past the shedding of tears, falls on her knees and 
prays aloud : 

" Oh ! God of Moses, of Isaac and Abraham. Oh , 
God, Thou the Great Ruler of the universe, hear the 
prayer of a poor maiden, and spare my lover ! Oh ! 
Jesus of Nazareth ! thou great Mediator and Redeemer, 
let my piteous appeal open the flood-gates of thy gra- 
cious mercy ! Spare, O spare my playmate, my lover; 
my all !" 

Overcome by her emotion, she too, fainted and fell 



72 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

to the floor. Dear old Tidly took her up in her arms. 
She kissed her with her black lips and said, " Gawd 
bless dis poor chile ; I don't care if she is got yankee 
blood in her, she is a sweet, noble ooman/' and as Mary 
opened her eyes, she said, " Wake up chile, I lubs you 
like my own chiluns ; and dat blessed prayer you 
prayed is gwine to save Mars John ; it gwine to do it." 
The voice of the old woman trembled, and she turned 
away to hide her emotion. 

O woman ! emblem of all that is high and pure and 
noble in this world, life without you would be like a 
trackless desert, without a tree, shrub or flower ! 

When Edward Johnson was told by his sister of the 
dreadful condition of John Halifax, he evidently 
suffered almost mortal agony, and he entreated her to 
watch over and save him, if possible. He went to see 
the two physicians who were attending so faithfully 
upon the wounded man, and asked them if they needed 
any assistance. They stated that there was but one man 
living in America who could be of any service, and he 
was an eminent specialist, who resided in the city of 
Philadelphia, and that it was exceedingly difficult to 
get him to leave home, and enormously expensive. 
" He shall be here in less than forty-eight hours," said 
Edward Johnson, " if you will allow it ;" and he did 
come, and completely changed the practice. After 
two days, he left, and stated that there was an even 
chance for recovery. 

On the morning after he left, a faint flush came upon 
the cheeks of John Halifax when Mary tipped gently 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 73 

into his room. " O John," she said, " you look better !" 
She took his wan and wasted hand in hers, and as she 
pressed it to her lips, an unconscious tear dropped 
upon it. " O John," said she, " will you never speak? 
Shall I have to court you ? Do you not see that I love 
you with all my heart and soul ? And, John, I mean 
to marry you when you get well !" And hiding her 
face in her hands she rushed out of the room. " Come 
back, Mary, come back, my darling !" cried John, and 
as she paused, he said with a trembling voice, "Oh, 
Mary, are you in earnest ? Can it be possible that the 
dream of my youth will be realized ? Oh, darling, if 
it be true I will live ! Despite of all the doctors in 
the world I will live !" 

He pressed her hand to his bosom, and tasted for 
the first time the topmost sparkling foam from the 
freshly poured cup of love. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

' ' To know her was to love her, 
None, none on earth above her. 
As pure in thought as angels are, 
To know her was to love her." 

— Samuel Rogers. 

How swiftly passed the hours ; how sweet was the 
time when Mary Johnson nursed John Halifax back 
to health ! 

For a long time it was doubtful if the old father, 
Henry Johnson, would give his consent to the marriage. 
At last he relented, and Edward Johnson acted with 
such generosity and nobility that a friendship was 
formed between John Halifax and himself which lasted 
their lives. Both were men of a high order of talent, 
both were young and ambitious, and, like all true men, 
when they made friends it left no sting behind. 

Each morning Mary would bring a beautiful boquet 
of flowers, and sit by his bedside. John Halifax lived 
in elysium. One morning he startled her by the re- 
quest : " Dear Mary, will you please pinch, and pinch 
me hard." 

" What on earth do you mean, John, said she." 

He said : " I want to know that I am really living. 
I feel like Abou Hassan, in the Arabian Nights, when 
the Caliph Haroun Alraschid gave him an opiate, and 
when he woke up in the moruing he found himself in 
the Caliph's palace, the Caliph, with his grand vizier, 
awaiting his orders. Do you not recollect that he 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 75 

would not believe it to be true until the nearest officer 
bit him on the finger ? " 

Smiling, she gently bit the end of his finger, and he 
said : "lam satisfied." 

As he grew better, she would read to him each day. 
Old Tildy would sit by with her knitting, and occasion- 
ally she would say, with a happy smile : " Ah ! my 
young mistis, did I not tell you that sweet prar was 
gwine to be heard ? " 

" Dear Aunt Tildy," said Mary, " I believe it was." 

Old Sterling, with a dignity not surpassed by the 
most eminent judge in the land, would come in at 
regular times with the meals. He, too, fell a willing 
victim to the tender graces of Mary Johnson. One 
night he said to Tildy : " That young Yankee ooman 
is just as pretty as our Virginia ladies. Doesn't you 
believe she's got some Southern stock in her ? Aint she 
kin to some Virginia people ? " 

" Go way, Sterling," says Tildy," you believes there 
aint nobody in the world as good and pretty as Vir- 
ginians. To tell de truth, Sterling, I thought so too 
till Miss Mary came, and then I gin up." 

" Tildy, you is wrong. De reason Miss Mary is so 
pretty and so sweet is, she was raised in Virginia. I 
don't care if she was born in the North, she never 
would have been the woman she is if she hadn't been 
raised in Virginia. It's de Virginia eating and de 
Virginia ar what done it." 

" I declar, Sterling, you dun found it out, and you 
is right." 



76 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

John Halifax will never forget the days of his con- 
valescence. Faith is great, hope is great, charity is 
great, but love is the greatest principle on this earth. 
Ambition has its high honors, and its high rewards, but 
love has higher and greater. It is the handmaid of 
truth, of justice and of religion. It is that part of 
heaven which is vouchsafed to the inhabitants of this 
earth. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

"O woman ! in our hours of ease, 
Uncertain, coy and hard to please, 
And variable as the shade, 
By the light quivering aspen made ; 
When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
A ministering angel thou ! " 

— Sir Walter Scott. 

Five years have elapsed. The young bachelor has 
long since suffered himself to be bound by the silken 
cords of matrimony. The love of men and maidens is 
infinitely inferior to that of married life. No happiness 
on earth is equal to, or can equal, that of a happily 
married couple. It is higher, nobler and purer than 
anything else in this world, and one can only regret 
that none are married or given in marriage in Heaven. 

Within a year after John Halifax recovered from 
his long illness he married Mary Johnson, and they 
now live in the magnificent old homestead which had 
belonged to the Halifax family for generations. 

Sterling and Tildy have grown older, but they have 
the same warm and generous hearts. Sterling has never 
had the same respect for John Halifax since he shot 
into the air, but he manages to conceal it. He often 
tells Tildy that he " ain't the same man as old marster." 
He says, " Tildy, I tell you old marster never would 
have shot in no a ? r," and he believes it, and he is proba- 
bly correct. The old servants, who can be found no- 



78 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

where in the world except in Virginia, are treated 
almost as members of the family. 

Edward Johnson and John Halifax have long since 
made friends, and one evening, while sitting in the twi- 
light on the porch overlooking the beautiful lawn at 
the Halifax mansion, John Halifax said, " Edward, do 
you know I believe, after all, that the war between the 
States of this Union" (he never would use the word 
rebellion) "ended right?" Edward answered : "Iain 
glad and delighted to hear you say so, John. You 
know that has always been my feeling ; but what caused 
your remark ? " John answered : " I have been think- 
ing over it long and well, and in the first place, there 
never was any warrant for secession in the Federal 
Constitution. The very preamble, which states, ' We, 
the people/ and not ' We, the States/ negatives the idea 
of a confederation. And, again, if we had succeeded in 
establishing the Southern Confederacy, I fear it would 
have been but of short duration." 

"And, Edward," continued John, " I will tell you a 
little secret. Once during the war between the States 
I saw a Georgia regiment (it was early in the war) with 
a seven-starred flag, emblematic of the Cotton States. 
Whether it was meant for a true flag or for an orna- 
ment I do not know ; but I do know that a few men 
wanted a Cotton States Confederacy, and that this flag 
was emblematic of that idea. It occurred to me in a 
moment, ' Can it be possible that the suffering of our 
soldiers and our people will be in vain, and that if the 
Southern Confederacy is established will the Cotton 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 79 

States secede from us? If this is true, to what fatal 
consequences will the principle of secession lead ? ' I 
will candidly admit that it gave me great uneasiness, 
and made me doubt the principles of secession." 

"Well, John," said Edward, " secession failed for 
the very reason you have indicated ; it was a ' rope of 
sand ' ; no true government could be founded upon such 
a principle. The Federal Constitution of 1787 was 
made up of compromises, but the compromises were 
welded together by master hands. When the framers 
said f We, the people/ they meant it, and when that 
preamble was carried on the floor of that memorable 
convention it made this people a nation, and not a con- 
federacy. 

" Chief Justice Marshall, with commanding ability, 
engrafted this idea on all of his decisions, and the Su- 
preme Court of the United States of America, which is 
of itself the most splendid and the most successful ex- 
periment of modern constitutional law, has, with the 
probable exception of the Dred Scott decision, followed 
his great leadership. And, in this connection, John, I 
have recently been more and more impressed with the 
great ability of the framers of the constitution by read- 
ing that clause which states : i The Congress shall have 
power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and 
regulations respecting the territory belonging to the 
United States/ and again, 'The United States shall 
guarantee to every State in this Union a republican 
form of goverment.' 

" Do you mean," said John, " that it is not the duty 



80 THE YOUNG BACHELOK. 

of Congress to guarantee to every territory a republi- 
can form of government ? " 

"I do." 

"Now," said John, " pursuing your opinion to its 
legitimate length, do I understand you to state that the 
Congress could, if it chose, give to a territory a mon- 
archical form of government ? " 

" My answer to that is, that the framers of the Con- 
stitution evidently contemplated and provided for the 
acquisition of new territory, and they did not guarantee 
to these territories a republican form of government, 
which is conclusively shown by their confining that 
guaranty alone to a State. The legitimate and proper 
construction of that clause is this : Congress can govern 
the territories in any manner it deems best for the in- 
terests of the governed. Suppose our government ac- 
quired a territory inhabited in great part by savages, 
would you give them the same rights that are exercised 
by our citizens at once, or wait until they were suffi- 
ciently civilized to understand the proper duties of 
citizenship ? " 

" Well, Edward, I do not agree with you. I believe 
that part of the Dred Scott decision which, in sub- 
stance, declares that the Constitution follows the flag is 
right, and, although not stated in the Constitution, there 
is an irresistible implication that the territories must 
be given a republican form of government. It was 
never intended that they should be governed in per- 
petuity as conquered provinces. Territorial expansion 
and trade expansion are inevitable and are right, but 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 81 

they must be made under the protecting aegis of the 
Federal Constitution. Yet I recognize the fact that 
our forefathers never for a moment contemplated the 
enormous extension of the right of suffrage as it now 
exists, as is shown by their refusal to permit the people 
to vote directly for the president. I have also found 
to my regret that my Virginia ancestors sympathized 
with this idea, for I find upon examination that a large 
minority of the Virginia legislature voted in favor of 
the infamous Alien and Sedition laws, and one of the 
Virginia delegates to the convention which framed the 
Federal Constitution voted to have patents of nobility 
for the best and most distinguished families." 

" That is one reason, John, why I have always ad- 
mired the conservatism of the Virginia people. They 
consider liberity and citizenship such excellent things, 
that they wish to retain them exclusively for them- 
selves, thus following the example of England, the 
mother country, and I think, in part, they are right." 

John Halifax replied : "I cannot agree with you in 
full, Edward, but there is one thing that you have neg- 
lected to state, and that is that the freedom of the 
negro accomplished also the freedom of the white man 
of the South. It unlocked his energy, and freed him 
from the incubus of African slavery, and the new South, 
under present auspices, bids fair to become the garden 
of America." 

"Mama says it's time to turn to supper." This 
was said by a little flaxen-haired boy, of about three 
years of age, the eldest born of John and Mary. His 



82 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

father took him in his arms and carried him to the 
table. 

At its head sat Mary, a little more plump, but more 
beautiful even as a matron than as a maid. " Edward," 
said John," did I ever tell you how Mary courted me, 
and I came near discarding her ? " " John, will I never 
hear the last of that?" said Mary. He answered, 
" You never will, it was the sweetest moment of my 
existence ; it brought me back to life ; it still lingers 
in my heart, where it will stay for all time." 



CHAPTER XV. 

"Yes ! let the rich deride, the proud disdain, 
These simple blessings of the lowly train, 
To me more dear, congenial, to my heart, 
One native charm than all the gloss of art." 

— u The Deserted Village" Oliver Goldsmith. 

It is the custom of novel writers to close their works 
by a happy marriage, and on the whole this is right. 
At the same time it is known that real true love only 
commences after a happy marriage. It is not meant 
that love does not commence before marriage ; it un- 
doubtedly does, but it finds its highest fruition and 
purest enjoyment afterwards. 

John Halifax and his wife had been married ten 
years. Their oldest child had just recovered from a 
most serious spell of illness. 

On a beautiful October evening, when the setting 
sun was casting his last rays upon the foliage of the 
trees in the yard, and every color of the rainbow could 
be seen upon the leaves as they lingered — that charm- 
ing season of the year which induces a gentle but pleas- 
ing melancholy — while sitting on their front porch, 
enjoying the scene, John Halifax said : 

" My darling, we have had much for which we ought 
to be grateful to a kind Providence. Try to conceal it 
as we may, it is true that wealth brings with it many 
blessings ; otherwise how could we have had the two 



84 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

physicians for our sick child — how could we have had 
the trained nurse ? It makes me shudder to think what 
we should have done without them. Is it not our duty 
to aid the poor ? " 

Mrs. Halifax answered, " Yes, it is, John, and yet I 
have always believed that the moderately poor are by 
far the happiest people on earth." 

John replied and said, " I agree with you in part, 
my dear ; but do you not overstate the case ? " 

With a shy and modest smile she said, " John, I can 
answer you better by reading a little manuscript I have 
written by request for a magazine, entitled ' Poverty, 
Charity and Happiness.' Do you wish to hear it ? " 

He answered, " While I knew that you read a great 
deal, I did not know that you aspired to authorship. I 
will hear it with pleasure." 

Thereupon she read, with a clear and musical voice, 
the following essay: 

"poverty, charity and happiness. 

' 'All happiness is comparative. There can never be in this world 
any such thing as pure and unadulterated happiness. There is no 
sweet without its bitter ; no rose without its thorn. Still there is a 
vast amount of happiness to be enjoyed by those who seek it rightly, 
and this world, under certain circumstances, may be made well-nigh 
as charming as the Garden of Eden. Mental and physical health 
combined with honorable poverty are the three great conditions of 
happiness. 

"Add to this the constant, uniform practice of charity, and the 
actor soon tastes the topmost sparkling foam on the cup of happiness. 
There is something elevating and ennobling in the performance of a 
good act, the effect of which is never lost. Tlie continued perform- 
ance of these acts brings to the actor a rest and peace of mind, and an 
untarnished, unalloyed joy, second to nothing in the world. 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 85 

" The triumph of great generals is accompanied by the cruel pain 
of the wounded and the agonizing sorrow of those who weep for the 
loss of their loved ones. The statesman who leaps into power over 
those who are left in the larch leaves behind him many broken for- 
tunes and lost aspirations of those whom he has crushed with an iron 
heel. In nine times out of ten the thoughts of the millionaire are 
cruelly disturbed by the reflection that he made his money in an im- 
proper manner, and he often tries to buy his way to heaven by 
church donations. One of the wealthiest men in America, many 
years since, pleaded the statute of limitations, and saved his money 
by one day, and saved himself from the penitentiary by the same act, 
and yet the poorest man in Virginia would scorn to have the article 
written about him such as Charles Francis Adams wrote of this rich 
man in the American Law Review of 1876, and proved every word by 
testimony that could not be controverted. A vast majority of the 
railroad magnates of to-day either made their money by fraudulent 
manipulation or, what is equally as bad, by a suppression of the 
truth. It is known of all men that a million of dollars cannot be 
made in an ordinary lifetime, in the great majority of cases, by hon- 
est methods*- There is a tremendous meaning in those words, ' It is 
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich 
man to enter into the kingdom of God.' A needle was a very small 
opening in the walls of Jerusalem, and while it is true that a camel 
could go through, he could only do it with the greatest possible dif- 
ficulty. Men with fat incomes have a dreary prospect before them. 
Poor people, as a rule, do not know how blest they are in this world. 
It is from their ranks mainly that all our great men come. It was 
from among them that our Saviour chose all of his apostles, and pov- 
erty may truly be said to be the nursery house of great deeds and 
great men and women. 

1 Who is it that has not been charmed with that delightful pov- 
erty so exquisitely described in the ' Vicar of Wakefield?' 

" The poor are by all odds the most charitable people in the 
world. They revel and delight in charity; a call which one makes 
upon another is hardly ever made in vain. By poor I do not mean 
the wretchedly destitute, but only those who possess in moderation a 
few of the comforts and none of the luxuries of life. 

"The ideal of human happiness is to be found, perhaps, in the 
country in Virginia, and consists of a good man and his wife, with 



8b THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

anywhere from eight to twelve children ; with a little farm of about 
a hundred acres, which brings just enough to support them all and 
to permit them to gather together a small library; with sheep and 
flax enough for them to weave their own clothing, and cattle enough 
to tan their own leather, making them comfortably independent of 
the world. The boys of such a family may be relied on to stock the 
table with fish and game ; the girls to enrich the tiny little parlor 
with gems of their own work ; and when, on Saturday night, the 
head of the family reads his favorite newspaper, the President and 
his cabinet may well envy them their feelings ! Their diamonds are 
to be seen in the beautiful dewdrops that flash in the grass upon the 
lawn ; their rubies in the brightness of their eyes ; their wealth in 
the ruddy glow of health that sparkles upon their cheeks, and in the 
glorious contentment they feel with their lot in life. ' A pretty girl 
out of a family like this (and they are always pretty) makes the very 
finest wife in the world ; they do not expect much, and are as true 
as steel, and, if it is necessary to defend their rights, they can ' whip 
their weight in wildcats,' but, unless aroused, they are as gentle and 
beautiful as the cooing dove. 

" It is a well-known and well-recognized fact that no married man 
can be truly happy unless he is slightly afraid of his wife, and charm- 
ing girls like those I have described, who were raised surrounded 
with poverty, charity and love, make noble wives who always com- 
mand this fear in the proper degree. A family like that I have 
described cares nothing for the ' ups' and ' downs' of the stocks and 
bonds in market ; nothing about the puny and insipid men and 
women described by modern novel writers ; they care nothing for the 
four hundred, whose daily life used to be laid off for them by the 
late esteemed Georgia Cracker, who was probably the most superb 
flunky that ever lived in America, but who proved that the Cracker 
has possibilities never dreamed of in the past. 

" Who would have wealth, with all of its cares and all of its bur- 
dens, when charming poverty, like that which I have described, is 
always within our grasp ? Little need have such people for lawyers, 
doctors and merchants. Indeed, Buckingham county, Virginia, is 
said to be the origin of the anecdote of the farmer who, seeing his 
family physician coming down the public road, dodged behind the 
hedge so as to escape him, and when asked why he did this, said he 
was ashamed to meet him ; that it had been so many years since any 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 87 

of his family had been sick that he felt badly about it, and on that 
account he dodged the doctor on all occasions. 

"Let the poor take heart. I do not mean that they shall boast 
of their delightful poverty and become egotistical and vain about it, 
but let them sympathize with and pity their rich neighbors, and help 
them as best they can in their arduous struggle for existence. Do 
not taunt them with their riches or continually remind them of their 
lot in life, but encourage them with the thought that the door of 
poverty is always open to them. Tell them to remember that all 
twelve of the apostles could not probably together have got five hun- 
dred dollars from a bank in Jerusalem on their joint note. Avoid 
the egotism of poverty, but let it be known to the world that the true 
elements of happiness consist of poverty, charity and love." 

" Well, my dear," said John, " I endorse your senti- 
ments, especially that part of your essay where it is said 
that it is necessary for every married man to be slightly 
afraid of his wife, but I am sorry that the great writer, 
William Makepeace Thackeray, does not agree with 
you on the subject." 

She answered and said, " I am a great admirer of 
Thackeray. Please tell me any of his writings which 
take a different position from that which I have ex- 
pressed." 

Says he : " Do you not recollect his anecdote, in 
one of his earliest works, of the young man who 
fell in love with a desperately poor, but a vain, shal- 
low and beautiful girl, who spent his money in a 
lavish manner and led him such a dance after marriage 
that once his Satanic Majesty overheard him solilo- 
quizing and stating that his wife bothered and harassed 
him so much about money that he would, if he could, 
cheerfully sell his soul to the Devil for it. Thereupon 



88 THE YOUNG BACHELOE. 

his Satanic Majesty, clothed in a swallow-tailed coat 
which partially concealed his tail, and a shining beaver 
hat, appeared before him and stated, ' I am prepared, sir, 
to make a contract with you/ The young man said 
that he meant what he said and that he was ready for 
business, and a contract was formally written and 
signed, by which for ten years the young man was to 
have all the money he wished. A particular condition, 
however, was attached to it. Everything went well 
until just before the time was out, when his wife over- 
heard him again soliloquizing and bemoaning his sad 
fate of having been compelled by his wife to sell his 
soul to the Devil for money. She then opened her bat- 
teries upon him in such a manner and with such force 
and effect that he did not very much regret the separa- 
tion he expected soon to take place. On the day that 
his contract terminated he gave to his friends a grand 
dinner, and while the dinner was going on, at five 
o'clock in the evening, a visitor was announced. He 
knew well who it was. ' Call him in/ said he. With 
that unwavering politeness for which his Satanic Maj- 
esty is noted, he came in with a cheerful bow, and drew 
forth the written contract and stated that he was ready 
for business. 'So am 1/ said the young man, 'and I 
beg to call your particular attention to the last clause 
of the contract, because I mean to enforce it.' That 
clause stated that before the young man could be carried 
to the infernal regions he could, if he chose, require his 
Satanic Majesty to live with his wife as her husband 
for six months, and he stated that he positively required 



THE YOUNG BACHELOK. 89 

it. His Satanic Majesty implored and entreated and 
in vain offered to give him ten or twenty years more, 
with as much money as he wanted, to be released from 
that clause in the contract, but the young man was ob- 
durate. Thereupon the Devil said that, while it was 
not his habit to break a contract, nothing could make 
him live with that woman for six months as her hus- 
band, and he tore up the paper and left." 

" Well, John," said she, after a hearty laugh, " that 
is a slander upon women, and, what is worse, it has 
lowered Thackeray in my opinion, because the anecdote 
is partly a plagiarism." 

Said John, "How is that, my dear?" 

" Well," said she, " I have found in an old magazine, 
The Portfolio, printed eighty-four years since, long 
before Thackeray's time, an anecdote which stated that 
every man who w r ent to hell declared that his wife sent 
him there ; that his fall was caused by her action. The 
Devil did not believe a word of it, but the rumor be- 
came so general that he determined to investigate it, 
and called a conference of his cabinet, with the result 
that it was agreed that two of the nicest young men in 
that locality should be given a sufficiency of money and 
sent to the earth and made to marry and live twelve 
months with their wives, and then they were to come 
back and give a report of their lives during the time. 
This was done, and when, some six months afterwards, 
while looking from his front porch, his Satanic Majesty 
saw two familiar looking men spring from the boat as 
it crossed the river Styx and run with great rapidity 



90 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

towards their former home. It turned out that these 
were the same men who had been sent to the earth, who 
stated that they could stand it no longer ; that they had 
tried married life for six months on earth and came 
back to the infernal regions as a refuge. I have not 
the least doubt but that Thackeray got his anecdote 
from that source." 

" Well/' said John, " you must not abuse Thackeray. 
He has laid the world under the deepest obligations. 
' Vanity Fair ? will live as long as the English lan- 
guage lasts. It is said when the author was reading 
over that portion of his manuscript in which, under an 
unusual spasm of virtue, Rawdon Crawley knocked the 
vicious old Lord Steyn into smithereens, he slapped his 
hand upon the table and said, l This is genius ;' and it 
was. He was a great author, but there was a depth of 
feeling unknown to him to be touched only by the 
master hand who wrote 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 
1 Dombey and Son/ and who described the pathetic 
journey of Little Nell. He has gone, to use his own 
language, into < the unknown sea which surrounds the 
whole world/ but his memory, < like the evening star, 
which grows brighter and brighter with the increasing 
darkness of the night/ will continue to grow brighter 
with each cycle of time. But, my dear, there is one 
thing you must admit, and that is that literature is av- 
aricious and shuns poverty; that it finds its true home 
only in wealthy surroundings." 

Mrs. Halifax answered : "I do not admit, but, on 
the contrary, I controvert and contest it. Where is 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 91 

Edgar A. Poe ? Where is John E. Thompson ? "Why 
did you make such a cruel remark ? " 

He said : " One good turn deserves another. Will 
you permit me to read an essay I have written upon 
Southern literature?" 

Said she, " I will, with pleasure." 

Thereupon he read the following : 

"southern literature. 

" From the Potomac to the Rio Grande del Norte there are few 
periodicals of Southern literature worthy of the name ; the excep- 
tions prove the rule. To say that this is discreditable is a very mild 
way of describing the situation. Europe and the Northern States of 
this Union furnish our chief literature. What is the reason and 
what is the remedy? It is certain that our people lack neither talent 
nor education. The columns of the old Southern Literary Messenger 
conclusively prove the ability of Virginia people, single handed, to 
edit and conduct a magazine second, perhaps, to none in the world, 
for the fame of that justly eminent periodical grows with age. Why 
is it that, for more than thirty years, we have fallen so far behind in 
the race? It will at once occur to many people that our poverty has 
been the chief cause, and this undoubtedly is true. 

"Literature is a flower which basks and flourishes in the sun- 
shine of prosperity. The best writings of Greece were made when 
Athens was rich with the spoils captured from her enemies and when 
the trade of her ships brought wealth to her doors. The Augustan 
age of literature flourished at Eome ' like a green bay tree ' after 
Augustus Csesar had adorned its temples with the trophies of his vic- 
tories and when her citizens possessed all of the benefits of bimetal- 
ism, gold and silver then for the first time in the history of the world 
constituting the basis of her money. It was then that the charming 
egotism of Horace delighted the noble men and women of that great 
empire, and time has proved the truth of his proud boast, 

l Exegi monumentum perennius acre.' 

I must digress long enough to state that he was the most magnificent 



92 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

freedman who ever enjoyed a taste of liberty. There is something 
quaint and delightful in his writing the words, 

' Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.' 

But alas ! alas ! what could he have done without the aid and patron- 
age of Macsenas ? As a question of speculative inquiry one would 
like to know how much Macsenas gave him for that splendid ode, 
dedicated to him. 

" Is it true that literature is avaricious, and flourishes only where 
fat bank accounts furnish the inspiration ? I will not make such a 
reflection, though albeit there is strong ground for it. Certain it is 
that as long as the Eoman Empire flourished in wealth it added a 
priceless literature to the world. One sighs now to think of the 
splendid system of recuperation their leaders possessed if perchance 
the free use of Falernian wine and noble literary banquets had too 
strongly depleted the purse. It was only necessary to acquire a con- 
sulship, or, better still, the governorship of a province, and all again 
was well. As long as bimetalism existed literature was in the height 
of her glory. It was not until the reign of Julian, in the year 360, 
that silver was, for the first time in the history of the world, demon- 
etized. Then literature fled far away into oblivion, and showed not 
her head again until the Bank of Venice electrified the world by a 
system of banking which brought a glorious prosperity to the fair 
fields of Italy. It was in the year 1099 that the Crusaders stormed 
Jerusalem, and the Franks were brought in direct contact with the 
great markets of Aleppo, Damascus, Bagdad and Cairo, and that 
trade which had always enriched the world first flowed towards 
Northern Italy, and in 1407 the Bank of Venice became a reality. 
The effective power of money was multiplied ten fold by this means. 
It was then that Gothic architecture had its birth ; it was then that 
the cathedrals of Paris and Bheims, of Bourges and Chartres, glad- 
dened the vision of the lovers of artistic beauty; it was then that the 
old masters made paintings which were immortal and which are 
worth to-day ten times their weight in gold ; it was then that the 
dawn of a new civilization burst upon the world. 

"When prosperity began to wane, and literature, true to her 
nature, was slowly going away again into retirement and oblivion, 
Christopher Columbus discovered America. Who can appreciate the 
feelings of the Europeans when this stupendous fact first became 



THE "YOUNG BACHELOE. 93 

widely known ? A new and splendid era had burst like a meteor 
upon the world. And when the Indian, to save himself from falling, 
grasped the bush in 1545 and exposed the hidden wealth of the great 
silver mine of Potosi, another magnificent era dawned again upon 
mankind. Literature, enrobed in her best attire, came again upon 
the stage of action, and the prosperity of this age gave birth to 
Shakespeare, the peerless monarch of letters ; to Bacon, the bril- 
liancy of whose genius makes us forget his shortcomings ; to all the 
great writers of the Elizabethan era. Venetian prosperity had made 
Raphael and Michael Angelo possible ; the mines of Potosi not only 
furnished the inspiration for the genius of Shakespeare and Bacon, 
but also for Galileo and Kepler. Silver and the genius of literature 
go hand in hand ; there is something in the pale lustre of the bright 
metal which seems to excite the highest and noblest sentiments of 
mankind. And yet, alas ! alas I we have demonetized it in the 
United States of America ! Literature, not wishing to go again into 
oblivion, raises her beautiful hand in piteous entreaty that we will 
restore to her that prosperity under which alone she can flourish. 

" Has that miserable wretch, Poverty, driven her from this beau- 
tiful Southern land ? It would seem to be true. Could Homer have 
written the Iliad and the Odyssey if he had not known every day 
where he would get his breakfast ? Could Virgil have written, ' You, 
oh ! Tityrus, while lying under the shade of the broad spread- 
ing beech, meditate while playing upon your silver oden harp,' 
if he had a negotiable note in bank that he knew he could not meet? 
Could Michael Angelo have done his noble work if a creditor had 
been dunning him every day? To ask such questions is to answer 
them. Could Oliver Wendell Holmes have written the 'Autocrat 
of the Breakfast Table ' if he had known that he would soon have to 
make an assignment ? Does the reader catch the reason why the 
South, for thirty years, has fallen far behind in literary eminence ? 
Literature will not live in the same house with that miserable jade, 
Poverty; they have never agreed and never will agree. On a few 
rare occasions, when they are forced to dwell together, the world is 
astounded by some great but sombre productions, like the c Raven,' 
or the few precious writings of the unfortunate Chatterton, but the 
exceptions prove the rule. 

" But there is a great future in store for Southern literature. 
When a sound and healthy public sentiment shall restore the great 



94 THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 

white metal to its proper position, and prosperity shall again dwell 
in the Southern land, literature will burst, lide Lazarus, the cere- 
ments of the tomb, and will again enrich and adorn the land of the 
magnolia with its most cherished and precious gems. All that lit- 
erature loves is here save wealth, and when that comes we will bask 
in the sunshine of its beauty and success." 

Mrs. Halifax said : " John, your essay is well written, 
but having been a good and faithful wife I did not 
think that you would in disguise inflict upon me a dis- 
course upon l Free Silver.' You know I have long 
since rebelled and declared that I would hear no more 
on that particular subject, and, besides, I do not think 
that a part of your essay is entirely original. Is it?" 

"Well, my dear, to tell you the truth, it is mainly, 
but not entirely, original. Why is it that you are so 
much opposed to free silver ? " 

She answered and said, "I am not, but I have heard 
so much from you about free silver and the Chicago 
Convention of 1896, that I have been compelled to 
invoke the law of self-defence. And it is true ; indeed, 
you are compelled to admit that it is not as important 
as it was some years since. Is not this true?" 

He answered, " Yes, it is not quite so important, only 
because a kind Providence has come to our aid and the 
annual amount of gold is nearly quadrupled, small 
thanks to the gold monometalists, and just as gold has 
increased in quantity prices have steadily risen, because 
gold has decreased in value and silver increased, thus 
proving in the clearest manner the force of our argu- 
ment that prosperity has increased in the same propor- 



THE YOUNG BACHELOR. 95 

tion that the amount of money has expanded. And, 
my dear, a new contention has been inaugurated upon 
which we will have soon to take sides. It is this: 
Since the annual output of gold has passed the three 
hundred million mark, the National Review, a foreign 
periodical of great note, has argued that the output of 
gold must be limited and it must be partially demone- 
tized, or we would have the same results which would 
have been accomplished by free silver. The writer in 
this and other periodicals states, in substance, ' Look at 
the Klondyke, with its teeming millions, with the 
ground only partially scratched over ; at Cape Nome, 
with the grass roots loaded with gold; at the reefs of 
Wittwattisstrand ; at Cripple Creep ; at California ; at 
British Columbia/ It is almost certain that by 1903, or 
1905 at the farthest, the world's production of gold will 
pass the five hundred million mark. I glory in this 
irony of fate which proves the truth of the contention 
of the bimetalists. Now, my dear, what are you going 
to do about it." 

"Well, John, I am going to close this discussion, and 
do nothing about it. I mean to think about something 
that is higher and greater than money — finance is not 
a woman's sphere. I want good money and a plenty 
of it." 

The confidence and love of John Halifax and his 
wife, the one for the other, and their sympathies were 
so much alike that they often conversed thus together. 
They undoubtedly enjoyed that comparative happiness 
mentioned by Mrs. Halifax in her essay, and proved to 



96 THE YOUNG BACHELOK. 

the world that marriage is the highest, the greatest and 
the noblest of all human institutions. Love, hope and 
charity are great principles, but the greatest of all is 
love. 



APPENDIX 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO 

IN AMERICA. 



A striking problem, exceedingly difficult of solution, 
presents itself to the people of the Southern portion of 
the American Union. It is the destiny of the negro, 
now that he is invested with the so-called rights of 
manhood and suffrage. The probable social and finan- 
cial effect of his freedom and his new-born political 
rights upon that great section of this country, is a ques- 
tion teeming with interest. The experiment has been 
in existence over a quarter of a century, sufficiently 
long to enable reflecting men to form an intelligent 
opinion as to the probable result. 

The edict of Omar was not more unrelenting, and 
was far less cruel, than the savage legislation which, at 
one fell blow, invested millions of people, who were in 
a semi-barbarous condition, with all the rights of suf- 
frage. That it disorganized society was to be expected ; 
that it caused comparatively so small a disorganization 
is the marvel of the age. The writer of this paper was 
a slaveholder, and the son and grandson of slaveholders, 
and was rocked in a slave-rocked cradle, and has lived 
all his life surrounded by negroes, and from his youth 
has given the problem more than ordinary reflection. 
The most serious fear was long entertained by many 



L«f 



a 



100 THE DESTINY OF THE NEGKO. 

people of the South, that the result of giving the right 
of suffrage to the negro would be a war of races, in 
which the weaker would go down, and that this war, if 
it ever commenced, would be long, bitter and unex- 
ampled in the ferocity which would accompany it. 
Many white men and women prepared themselves, as 
best they could, for such a struggle, and I have often 
thought that the adequacy of their preparation, and the 
firmness of their determination, went a great way to 
prevent such a culmination. It is difficult to estimate 
the moral force of at least five millions of intelligent 
white people living between the Potomac and the Rio 
Grande del Norte, who are an entire homogeneous people, 
and who were united in one idea, and that was to pre- 
serve white supremacy in the South at all hazards, and 
regardless of consequences. All other questions paled 
into insignificance before this mighty problem. No 
political or economic question could for years be dis- 
cussed, and the whites who attempted to band the 
negroes in a solid mass were treated with a severity as 
merciless as it was just and proper. 

In the extreme South that dreadful band, known as 
the Ku Klux Klan, made an absolutely appalling re- 
cord, and ruled an immense territory with greater force 
and terrorism than the Czar of Russia did his domains. 
It never existed in the State of Virginia ; indeed, it 
could not, as our people belonged, perhaps, to a higher 
grade of civilization, and would not only have accepted 
but would have inaugurated an open war in preference ; 
and another consideration was that the number of 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 101 

negroes was not so great as in the far South. And yet 
it must be admitted by fair-minded people that, how- 
ever much in our hearts we may abhor the methods of 
the Ku Klux Klan, there was a strong and imperious 
necessity for the existence of some power to maintain 
Auglo-Norman civilization. 

Our legislatures were filled with negroes and carpet- 
baggers from the North, the carpet-bagger himself be- 
ing the very scum of Northern society, and his chief 
ally was the scalawag, who was a native-born traitor ; 
together they perpetrated the grossest injustice, and in- 
augurated a carnival of crime certainly unparalleled in 
the history of America. Even the English dictionary 
has been enriched by new and original epithets of 
opprobrium which we heaped upon them with a' lavish 
hand. Under their infamous rule, property of all kinds 
became well-nigh worthless, and the most dreadful of 
all crimes, which is unmentionable here, became of 
frequent occurrence by the negro, and at one time fore- 
boded the most dreadful consequences to our society. 
An organized Freednian's Bureau taunted us with a 
thousand petty annoyances, and aggravated the negro 
to many wicked and malicious acts, done often for the 
purpose of airing his new-born zeal for freedom. 

To whom could we of the South turn for relief? The 
government had' branded us with the opprobrious 
epithets of slave drivers and rebels, large masses of our 
best citizens were disfranchised, and Puritan literature 
was well-nigh exhausted in its efforts to discover terms 
sufficiently vile to convey to their readers an idea of our 



102 THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 

ferocity, our utter intolerance of the Union, and our 
lawlessness. One would have as soon expected a devout 
and pious Catholic to have imprisoned the Pope, as for 
a Southern man to have expected redress during the 
reconstruction period at the hands of the Federal gov- 
ernment. Hosannas were everywhere sung to the so- 
called noble defenders of the Union, while taunt after 
taunt was heaped upon the rebel who had dared to 
battle for what he deemed to be his rights under the 
Federal Constitution. 

Our children were growing up in ignorance, for the 
alienation and acquirement of property was almost im- 
possible. The writer has known a splendid tract of 
land in one of the Southern States, during this period, 
to rent for five thousand dollars a year, which was very 
inadequate, while twenty-five hundred dollars was all 
that was offered for its purchase, and indeed it was 
actually sold for that amount. And this was the legit- 
imate and logical result of the reconstruction legisla- 
tion, because the purchaser had to pay the taxes, which 
almost amounted to confiscation. It was for this 
reason that land, in many instances, would not sell for 
much, if anything, over one year's rent. The Ku 
Klux Klan, whatever else it may have done, changed 
all this, and was a strong instrumentality in the pre- 
servation of peace and the restoration of order. The 
writer does not justify this organization, on the con- 
trary, he abhors it, but the truth of history will sub- 
stantiate the statement that while its annals are reeking 
with deeds that shock the moral sensibility of all man- 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 103 

kind, at the same time it accomplished a great amount 
of good. During all the reconstruction period, on the 
whole, a majority of the negroes behaved well, but 
with a large minority the contrary was the case. He 
was going through a transition state. Firmly impressed 
with the idea that the great United States Government 
could give him superiority over his white neighbor, 
the battle was long and fierce. 

It may be well at this stage of this paper to correct 
a widespread impression that the conduct of the negro 
during the war between the States of this Union in 
protecting, to a certain extent, the family of his white 
master, was the result of love and respect. The state- 
ment is in part true, and their conduct was certainly 
commendable, but the chief motive was fear of the ac- 
tion of the Confederate soldier. They knew that stern 
justice would be swiftly dealt to them, and this is the 
chief solution of their action. This statement may de- 
stroy the glamour of a beautiful fiction, but it is the 
unbiased truth of history, and it cannot be successfully 
controverted. 

After the negro had become free, he had an idea 
that education would open to him a world heretofore 
unknown, and that in books he would find the open 
sesame to a grand prosperity. With lavish and unex- 
ampled liberality, the States of the South fostered this 
idea, and the white people generously voted millions 
upon millions of dollars to advance his education, and 
the same thing is to-day being continued. What has 
been the result ? Has it been a failure or a success ? 



104 THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 

I can state with truth and fairness that it has been 
neither. Bitter and humiliating has been the disap- 
pointment of the negro, and the intelligent and pre- 
judiced white fanatic who expected what was impossi- 
ble, at the meagreness of the result, while those of us 
who have always had a better appreciation of their 
character think that on the whole the money has not 
been misspent, and that it has been productive of good, 
and we are willing to continue it for another decade, 
or even longer, in order that the experiment may have 
a fair and impartial trial, so that the world cannot 
taunt us with injustice in this respect. The reason of 
the comparative failure of the attempted education 
arises from the singular want of analysis in the rea- 
soning power of the negro. He is almost wholly lack- 
ing in it. He learns the alphabet and to read and 
write with extraordinary readiness. He is full of 
imagery, and many of them are natural orators, but 
when the necessity comes for analysis, or mathamatics, 
he is lost and helpless. Often have I known a simple 
problem like the following to stump and confound their 
so-called trained scholars : " If A can do a piece of 
work in one day, B the same work in two days, 
and C in five clays, how long will it take them to 
do it if they work together?" As simple as this is, 
they cannot, as a rule, comprehend it. It seems that 
there is a well-defined limit to their capacity to 
learn, and it appears to be ingrained in their very 
nature. The consequence is that they do slovenly 
work, and make slovenly mechanics. Their greatest 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 105 

weakness is their lack of ambition. Naturally of 
contented and happy dispositions, a very small amount 
of property suffices for their wants, and, generally 
speaking, they will not work except under compulsion. 
The great battle for supremacy is practically over, 
and they have fallen into a mediocre state which seems 
to content them, and never again, as a class, -is it pro- 
bable that they will attempt to override the Anglo- 
Saxon rule. The natural increase of the whites, sup- 
plemented by immigration, as shown by the last census, 
places them more and more in the background, and it 
behooves us to treat them with justice and with kind- 
ness and conciliation, and they undoubtedly are so 
treated. Their rights of personal security, personal 
liberty and private property are everywhere respected 
in the South, and it is done from a feeling of kindness, 
which is the result of association. The negro loves to 
wait upon the Southern white man, and the feeling of 
kindness is reciprocal. AYe know him, and he knows 
that we know him ; we are disposed to condone his 
petty violations of right, and, as a rule, we always help 
him when he is in distress, and we do it from true 
principles of friendship. He has many lovable quali- 
ties. He is not vindictive by nature, and easily forgets 
and forgives a wrong, the memory of which an Anglo- 
Saxon would cherish all of his life. He is imitative in 
the highest degree, and copies the virtues and the vices 
of those with whom he associates. He is superstitious 
beyond all mankind, and the thin veneering of educa- 
tion does not conceal his natural, ingrained, partial 



106 THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO, 

voodoo worship. Indeed, superstition is the chief 
source of his unhappiness, and all efforts to eradicate it 
seem to be vain and futile. 

A great amount of very pleasant literature has been 
written about the negro and the family of his former 
master, showing the cordial relations that existed be- 
tween them, and it is true, but truth has often been 
sacrificed and, perhaps, by none more than the brilliant 
and talented author of that exquisite production, 
"Mars Chan," in making the house-servants talk broken 
dialect, when it is a fact that from long association, 
they often used language almost as good as their owners. 

The entire South heartily and sincerely rejoices that 
the negro is free ; this sentiment is practically unani- 
mous, because we feel that a burden has been lifted from 
our shoulders, and we wish him well, and, if left alone, 
we feel confident that we can work out the problem to 
the satisfaction of all parties. There is some selfish- 
ness is our rejoicing that the negro is free ; that event 
has unlocked the dormant energy of the Southern white 
man, and we can now work out our destiny on a higher 
and nobler plane, unfettered by the incubus of slavery 
and its attendant consequences. 

As a politician, the negro has been a phenomenal 
failure. To this day he cannot understand why his 
right to vote has done him so little practical good. At 
first he was the most incorruptible suffragan in th e 
world, but many years since he succumbed to civilized 
influence, and now he sells his vote with equal facility, 
if not for so great an amount, as the white man. I do 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 107 

not mean all of their race, for there are many who do 
not sell their votes, but it is undoubtedly true that a 
large minority of their votes are on the market at every 
strongly contested election. This has brought about 
with us many disastrous consequences. Sentiment has 
often been well-nigh discarded, and a new era of what 
is termed "practical politics" has been, in many in- 
stances, inaugurated. By means of the new regime, 
many men in the South have been elevated to high and 
exalted positions who otherwise would, in all human 
probability, have remained in obscurity, and probably 
never have been heard from outside of their own narrow 
and limited circle. 

On the whole, I conclude this article with the pre- 
diction that the negro has given us more trouble in the 
past than he will ever again give us in the future. We 
would not trade him for the foreign population of 
Massachusetts, or the Slav and Hungarian population 
of the Northwest ; he is more easily satisfied, and does 
not believe in labor strikes, and with proper super- 
vision he makes an excellent laborer. The large, 
homogeneous white population of the South will domi- 
nate him, but they will treat him with kindness and 
justice, and so far as the question of happiness is con- 
cerned, he will probably enjoy more of it than the 
superior race. His docile and lethargic nature makes 
him accept his condition with patience and resignation. 
The Cavalier understands his nature ; the Puritan does 
not, hence they reach different conclusions. Gradually, 
as time passes, the negro will become more contented 



108 THE DESTINY OE THE NEGRO. 

when he finds, as he surely will, that he must always 
occupy a position subordinate to the white race. Within 
his own limited local sphere, with the aid of the 
white man, he can work out a destiny that will satisfy 
all the needs of his nature. We of the South will not 
only do the negro no injustice, but, on the contrary, we 
will generously aid him in his aspirations for a higher 
and better existence. All we ask as to this question 
from our Northern brethren is to let us alone. Of all 
the people in the world, we are the best suited to solve 
the problem of his destiny, because the great principles 
which actuate us in our relations with him are justice, 
charity and kindness. 

The great mistake made as to the nature of the negro 
by our Northern brethren and the enlightened people 
of Europe, is that they think that the same cause will 
bring about the same results in a negro as in a white 
man ; that education, and prosperity, and freedom will 
make him a citizen equal to the native-born white man 
of the Anglo-Saxon race. This is only partially true. 
The negro does not, never can and never will possess 
the same qualities. There are certain innate principles 
born in mankind which cannot be changed by circum- 
stances. 

Two hundred years ago the English speaking people 
possessed in America only a few hundred miles of the 
Atlantic coast line, e'xtending some four or five hun- 
dred miles into the interior ; the French enjoyed full 
sway over the immense territory from the mouth of the 
St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. To-day the great 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 109 

Anglo-Saxon race has invaded with its possessions the 
Arctic Zone, and holds all of North America, with the 
exception of Mexico and the small States of Central 
America. They are steadily growing in power and in 
territory, and soon the Hawaiian Islands will be annexed 
and the Mcaraguan Canal be built, and the United 
States of America will commence a new destiny and a 
new career of prosperity hardly dreamed of in the past. 
"Whence comes this mighty progress ? It is from the 
inherent nature of the Anglo-Norman citizen. 

The negro has been over two hundred and forty 
years in America, and for a considerable part of this 
time he has been in the West Indies free. In all that 
period he has not produced a statesman, an orator, a 
poet or historian, and, with the sole exception of 
Toussant L'Overture, not a single general capable of 
commanding an army, or of directing great military oper- 
ations. The noted Frederick Douglas was said to be 
fully two-thirds white, and therefore he cannot be 
claimed by the negro race. 

Some years since a striking illustration of the nature 
of the two races came under my observation. The 
James River and Kanawha Canal had been greatly in- 
jured by the memorable floods of 1870, and a large 
number of the convicts from the Virginia penitentiary, 
oth white and negroes, were engaged in repairing it. 

>ese convicts were under the control of armed guards, 
> had over them almost absolute power. In many 
nces they were long-term convicts, who had little 
hope of ever being restored to liberty again. 




110 THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 

Noticing, in very cold weather, that the negro con- 
victs went into the water almost up to their necks, the 
writer naturally enquired the reason why the whites did 
not do the same work. The answer was that it was 
impossible to make them ; that the effort had been re- 
peatedly tried, and always without success ; that they 
would rather lose their lives first, and that no power 
and no punishment could make them do it. They con- 
sidered it degrading to their manhood, while the negroes 
performed this cruel work with alacrity and cheerful- 
ness. 

The Southern States of this Union have never re- 
ceived much foreign emigration, and the Anglo-Saxon 
blood is, perhaps, as pure there as it is in England. 
This fact alone makes white supremany absolutely cer- 
tain. At the same time, there is between the white and 
the negro in the South a kindly feeling, which is true 
and sincere ; nothing has ever been able to seriously 
disturb it, and its consequences to both races are likely 
to be highly beneficial. 



Since the foregoing paper was written, the well known 
Montgomery conference, relative to the future condition 
of the negro in the South, has come and gone. 

It was an able and sincere body of men, whose re 
flections and suggestions on this great subject ha 
excited profound attention. 

It is a very healthy sign that the people of 
Northern section of this Union have at last awa' 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. Ill 

to the horror of the great crime they committed in 
forcing upon us unrestricted and ignorant negro suffrage 
at the point of the bayonet. They have in fact turned 
over the great problem to our keeping and our honor. 
It is a high trust ; its duties are sacred, and should be 
met by us in a spirit of tolerance and of Christianity, 
coupled with firmness. 

No thoughtful man will ever give up the power given 
to us by the fifteenth amendment to the Federal Consti- 
tution. The true and only remedy is the reasonable 
restriction of the right of suffrage, either, first, by 
educational qualification, or, second, by a property 
qualification. 

In other words, no man in Virginia, or in the entire 

South, should be allowed to exercise the privilege of 

the ballot unless he could read and write the English 

language, or unless he paid taxes on not less than two 

hundred dollars worth of property, real or personal. But 

Confederate soldiers and sailors must be exempted from 

the operation of this clause; their right to vote was won 

amid the storm aud conflict of battle. It must never 

be impaired. If it was practicable, it would be well 

to give the white people who are the descendants of 

those who had the right to vote in 1867 the right of 

suffrage without either an educational or property quali- 

^ation, thus insuring white supremacy ; and I am not 

'y not opposed to it on principle, but, on the con- 

7, will be glad if it can be done. I may be mis- 

, but it is my opinion, after careful consideration, 

is unconstitutional. 



112 THE DESTINY OF THE NEGKO. 

Small as seems the restriction I here advocate, it is 
yet sufficient to accomplish a great purpose. 

Note. — It must be noted that the main part of the 
foregoing essay was written prior to the acquisition of 
the Hawaiian Islands and the Caban war. 

II. 

More than three years have elapsed since the fore- 
going essay was written. Certain significant events 
have occurred during that period which strongly em- 
phasize the conclusions I have reached. Many of the 
negroes have emigrated to the Northern States of this 
Union, sending there the very best of their laborers, 
with the result, as the census shows, notably in Bucking- 
ham county, Virginia, but also in several other counties, 
that the negroes still outnumber the whites, while the 
white male adult citizens are in the majority, leaving 
the negro women and children without protection, and 
as an incubus upon the whites. Tempted "bv the high 
wages of railroads and other corporations, those who 
have not emigrated have in great part deserted the farms, 
until, in many instances, it is almost impossible to get 
field labor ; and what is far worse, they have practically 
declined to hire themselves at any price to perforn 
household duties. Those who have grown up and ha T 
been partially educated since the war between the St? 
of this Union, under the new regime have becomf 
tremely arrogant, and through the entire South s 
heinous and unmentionable crime, which porter 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGKO. 115 

ginia, before the Tri-State Medical Association of 
Virginia and the Carolinas, forecasting the destiny of 
the American negro, has justly excited profound atten- 
tion. It is a thoughtful and well-considered paper and 
deserves the most careful reading. It is pessimistic in 
the highest degree. While I agree with him in part, 
I do not on the whole. He distinctly states that there 
is a danger of the negro relapsing into barbarism, and 
that the Auglo-Saxon will not live with him in a com- 
munity where negroes constitute a majority of the 
people. Many of the conclusions of this able writer 
are undoubtedly correct, but I say with modesty that 
I think his picture is overdrawn. It is certian that 
the negro greatly improved in his something more than 
two centuries of slavery, and it would be a stain upon 
our age and our civilization if we could not enable him 
to maintain this improvement by wise and judicious 
legislation. It is true that the American negro came 
mainly from the west coast of Africa, and belonged to 
the lowest order of the race, being far inferior to the 
Kaffir and other tribes of South Africa, of whom it is 
stated by Mr. James P. Bryce, in his " Impressions of 
South Africa," that hardly an instance has ever been 
known where the South African negro has committed, 
or attempted to commit, the unmentionable crime. He 
states that the white females there are singularly devoid 
of fear of this loathsome and heinous crime. 

I fully agree with Doctor Barringer that we must 
cultivate the industrial education of the negro, and in 
this lies mainly his hope. This is, beyond all doubt, 



116 THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 

his chief reliance. It would be a serious reflec- 
tion upon the American people if we permitted the 
negroes to lapse into barbarism. Their tribal instincts, 
shown especially by their churches, the striking ex- 
ample of Hayti with its Voodoo worship, and, Doctor 
Barringer states, its cannibalism — these significant facts 
destroy the theories of old Zachary Macaulay, the 
father of the great historian, even more fully than the 
image-smashing iconoclasts of the middle ages. The 
distinct retrograde movements that have been made in 
eastern North Carolina and the rice islands of South 
Carolina, warn us that the problem is one which re- 
quires firm and determined action. 

It affords me pleasure to state that in Virginia a revo- 
lution has commenced. We have voted in favor of a 
new constitution, which is a tremendous stride in the 
right direction. There is no sort of doubt but that 
the new constitution will restrict the right of suffrage. 
With the light of the experience pf the Southern States 
of this Union before us, our labors will be greatly les- 
sened. We should first devote the money of the white 
people to the education of the white people's children 
and the money of the negro to the education of the 
negro children. It will be noted that in three years 
my opinion has undergone a change on this subject. 
If the money arising from the taxation of the white 
people is devoted exclusively to the education of the 
white children, it will give them a far better and higher 
class of schools without raising taxation. It does not 
seem that there can be any objection to this amendment. 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 117 

Second. No man should vote in Virginia unless he 
pays taxes on two hundred dollars worth of property, 
real or personal, or unless he can read and write the 
English language, but Confederate soldiers and sailors 
must be exempted from the operation of this clause. 

Third. All judges should be elected by the people 
for comparatively short terms, and their salaries should 
be increased in order to obtain the best talent. The 
chaDge is of special and commanding importance. 
I think that the judges are elected by the people in all 
but three States of the Union. A lawyer engaged in 
the active practice of my profession, after years of re- 
flection, it is my honest opinion that the rights and 
liberties of the American people are more in danger 
from the usurpation of power by a comparatively irre- 
sponsible judiciary (the particular object of my remarks 
is the Federal judiciary) than any other source what- 
ever. Government by injunction (I allude especially 
to the celebrated Federal Injunction issued and enforced 
about six years since) was the greatest blow ever struck 
at American liberty. The clash between the State and 
the Federal judiciary is rapidly increasing, with the 
victory almost uniformly in favor of the general gov- 
ernment. The advancement of mechanical science, 
binding this great country together by over two hundred 
thousands miles of steam and electric railways, greatly 
intensifies this danger. It has come to this — that we 
cannot get an income tax. After a brave and vigorous 
effort, when success was almost accomplished, and " be- 
tween two days," an eminent Federal judge changed 



118 THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO. 

his opinion and our wealthiest citizens are relieved from 
just and proper burdens, thus forming a singular and 
unfavorable contrast with England, and, indeed, the 
chief countries of Europe. If our judges had been 
elected by the people there would have been no govern- 
ment by injunction, and the income tax would be a part 
of the law of the land. 

If these provisions are engrafted upon the Virginia 
Constitution about to be framed it will be a long step 
in the direction of reform, and both races will be bene- 
fited. I do not believe in the force of the suggestion 
made at the Montgomery Convention by Mr. Bourke 
Cochran, when he advocated the abolition of the fif- 
teenth amendment to the Federal Constitution. The 
sword of Mr. Bourke Cochran has been unsheathed in 
so many different and inconsistent causes, that he is al- 
most as hard to follow as Mr. Carl Schurz, or Senator 
George W. Hoar. However much we may deplore it, 
the fifteenth amendment is here to stay. It gives us 
power which it would be folly to surrender. True 
statesmen deal with facts and not with theories. And 
in this connection I will sound a word of warning. 
We must so frame our new Constitution as not to con- 
travene the Federal Constitution, otherwise it is possi- 
ble that we might jeopardize our representation in 
Congress. The distinguished President of the Virginia 
Bar Association, Mr. William A. Anderson, has re- 
cently, in an excellent address before that body, pointed 
out plainly the danger of certain contemplated reforms. 

This paper, already far too long, will be concluded by 



THE DESTINY OF THE NEGKO. 119 

pointing out as a guide to the colored race, and as a dis- 
tinguished example for them to follow, Mr. Booker 
Washington, who in his own person is a proof of the 
capabilities of the negro. He is entitled to the respect 
and good-will of every American citizen. The problem 
of the destiny of the negro in America is one of great 
delicacy and difficulty j it should be met in a broad and 
catholic spirit. We should meet it not as partisans, not 
as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans, who 
not only wish but mean to maintain our own civiliza- 
tion and the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race, and 
at the same time do full justice to an inferior and de- 
pendent race. 

If we err at all let us err on the side of mercy ; let 
us bring to bear upon it the sublime and beautiful 
precepts of Him who more than eighteen hundred years 
ago taught the glorious and immortal truths and hopes 
of Christianity. If we meet it in this spirit it will be 
shorn of many of its difficulties, and before another 
generation goes from the scene of action the great prob- 
lem will be solved in a manner that will be of lasting 
benefit to both races. 

CAMM PATTESON. 

Sunny side Place, Buckingham County, Va., 
September 22, 1900. 



1901 



LEMv'13 



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The YOUNG 
BACHELOR 



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OAMM PATTESON 




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CONTAINING AN ESSAY ON 

THE DESTINY OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICA 

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